Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created not only to legitimise the new state but also to give birth to a new nation, a nation based on substantive equality, dignity and freedom. In this paper I focus on the failure of the transition process to put social justice on the agenda. Although, it could be said that the TRC process played an important role in bringing about stability and political reconciliation, in a word, political justice, the issue of social justice is a fairly neglected dimension in discussions on the TRC and the transition process in South Africa. This failure has a lot of implications especially given the fact that the gravest legacy that apartheid bequeathed to South Africa was one of systemic poverty, structural unemployment and inequality. In this paper, I argue that in transitional societies where conflict was also characterized by violent dispossession and socio-economic deprivation, the issue of social justice and thus redistribution should be central to the discussion. In order to do this, I will first look at how the taxonomy of victimhood has been interpreted within the human rights discourse to include notions such as, passiveness, being content with moral victory and putting the past behind. Related to this, I discuss the tendency, also a result of adopting the dominant conception of human rights discourse, of drawing a sharp distinction between perpetrators and beneficiaries. Focusing on beneficiaries would not be to engage in a witch-hunt but to move towards what Mahmood Mamdani calls sustainable reconciliation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Using data from the Baldus, Woodworth, and Pulaski (1990) study of Georgia's death penalty system, we examine the influence of victim gender in death penalty cases. Furthermore, to improve our understanding of the meaning of victim gender, we consider (1) the joint effects of victim gender and victim race, (2) victimization characteristics that might explain victim gender effects, and (3) the impact of victim gender at different decision making stages in the death penalty case process. We find that both victim gender and race are associated with death sentencing outcomes and an examination of the joint effects of victim gender and race reveal considerable differences in the likelihood of receiving a death sentence between the most disparate victim race-gender groups. In particular, it appears that black male victim cases are set apart from all others in terms of leniency afforded to defendants. We also show that the effect of victim gender is largely explained by gender differences in the sexual nature of some homicides. An examination of prosecutorial and jury decision making reveals that while victim gender has little impact on prosecutorial decisions, it has a meaningful impact on jury decision making.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The criminal justice system, in its response to co-victims of homicide, contributes to their experiences and recovery. The treatment homicide co-victims receive from criminal justice personnel and as a result of the criminal justice processes often leave them aggrieved and feeling alienated. Researchers have coined the phrase “secondary victimization” to describe the trauma that individuals who are victims of crime experience as a consequence of the system processes and/or interactions with criminal justice personnel. The purpose of this study is to compare homicide co-victims’ responses to police and court personnel, as well as experiences with police notification and investigation through court trial and appeals. Data are drawn from focus group discussions with 27 co-victims of 24 homicides. Themes associated with secondary victimization will be identified and compared across the different system actors and various stages of the criminal justice process.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The purpose of this project is to evaluate the influence of victim gender and perpetrator motivation on observer’s perceptions of a rape scenario. Perpetrator motivation may be an important influence on decision making entities (e.g., juries, judges, organizational representatives); however, most research has examined characteristics of the victim as a major influence in decision making (e.g., gender, type of dress, intoxication). This project is currently in progress with a planned sample size of 200 male and female undergraduates from a small northeastern college. Participants are asked to read one of several scenarios describing an interaction between a male perpetrator and another person (male vs. female) in which the motivation of the perpetrator (hate crime vs. lust/crime of passion) is manipulated. Participants are then asked to rate the perceived level of trauma, culpability and credibility for the victim, as well as perpetrator culpability and credibility. It is predicted that female participants will be less likely to blame the victim than male participants. Also, it is predicted that there will be a synergistic effect of perpetrator motivation and victim gender. Specifically, a crime of lust perpetrated on a male victim will be associated with higher victim blaming than all other conditions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper investigates the limits of increasing self-consciousness about crime risk in contemporary society. As the institutional and individual attitudes that sociologists have labeled “the risk society” take hold, rational self-protection by individuals and institutions becomes more widely encouraged, to the point of becoming nearly a moral duty: Disapproval and even blame attach to people and institutions who fail to take precautions to protect themselves from risks like criminal victimization. This social norm may ultimately undermine itself, at least to some degree, if self-protection becomes increasingly ineffective in an environment where it is increasingly widespread. I examine whether empirical evidence suggests that this possibility is a real one by analyzing time series data from the British Crime Survey, the National Crime Victimization Survey, and other relevant data sources. In those analyses, I investigate how the relative risks of various types of criminal victimization have changed over time for individuals who have and have not taken relevant precautions. In effect, this analysis examines trends in the risk premium for being careless. I then investigate alternative explanations for those trends (i.e. other than the self-defeating character of widespread risk-prevention norms) by analyzing changes in the composition of groups who do and do not take precautions.