NCJ Number
181206
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 38 Issue: 2 Dated: Spring 1998 Pages: 185-200
Date Published
1998
Length
16 pages
Annotation
Interviews, observations, and a review of British and North American literature on the social organization of practical and political responses to the aftermath of homicide formed the basis of an analysis of two contrasting perspectives on victims and murderers.
Abstract
The first perspective is conventional in criminology and victimology and affects how experts talk about homicide to themselves and, directly or indirectly, to policymakers, politicians, and others. The second perspective rests on the experiences of victims' families and affects the framing of their demands. The two perspectives diverge markedly. The conventional perspective regards murders as the culmination of drawn-out, acrimonious transactions occurring within demographically homogeneous sectors of the population. This perspective leads to a blurring or moral identities and causal relations. Homicide survivors' organizations champion the other perspective, which claims an existentially validated authority. Survivors experience homicide as a chaotic episode that gives way to strong, antagonistic archetypes of victim are offender. The differences in these two visions indicate the analytic complexities of the phenomenon of murder, as well as the politics that are beginning to emerge around the issue of agreeing on the nature of murder. 86 references (Author abstract modified)