Embodied victims: An archaeology of the ‘ideal victim’ of restorative justice

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a historical-critical framework to reconstruct and discuss how the crime victim is portrayed within theoretical literature, policy and legal documents on restorative justice, with an emphasis on England and Wales. It first centres on a description of the most deep-rooted and wide-ranging discourses on the victim’s characteristics within restorative justice. Once these features have been organized into an ‘ideal’ model, the article traces the conditions which fed into its development, that is, the cultural context within which this model has emerged. The overall goal is not to test the ‘ideal victim’ within restorative justice, but rather to explore how this methodological tool, within a historical and critical approach, might help to shed light on some taken-for-granted assumptions of restorative justice and their legal, policy and practical implications, thus contributing to the critical assessment of this acclaimed “new frontier” of contemporary penality.

Driving Change on Twitter: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of the Twitter Debates on the Saudi Ban on Women Driving

“…That is, in adopting Twitter as a platform for their discourse, tweeters supportive of women drivers have created a public space in which they can question accepted and concealed standards and behaviors. While many may argue, as Maglione (2016) does, that presenting women as victims is not always empowering, this research illustrates that the presentation of the victimization of women is vital in destabilizing the prevailing discourse that claims that women are being restricted for their own protection and benefit. The concept of victimhood also reveals that people are becoming more aware of the reality of the lives of women in the KSA while simultaneously revealing the previously unexpressed desire among women for independence.…”

Imaging victims, offenders and communities. An investigation into the representations of the crime stakeholders within restorative justice and their cultural context

“…The paper considers only cultural constructs taking place in the geo-historical context considered and whose languages show consistent overlapping resemblances with the key representations of the crime stakeholders in RJ. The assumption, supported by textual evidence, is that these phenomena have been rich reservoirs which have provided scholars, practitioners and policymakers with certain vocabularies, particular ways of making sense of crime and crime responses, orienting distinctive needs and interests in context (Maglione, 2016). The 'ideal stakeholders' are consistent with those vocabularies, appealing to new understandings of crimes, and responding to those needs and interests.…”

“…The idea of an embodied victim appears particularly fitting with the representations of this crime stakeholder which underpin laws and policies on RJ ( Maglione, 2016). An embodied victim is an individual victimised by a specific, clearly identifiable offender, not a social structure or organisation.…”

“…Building upon a recent body of work (Maglione, 2016;Maglione, 2017), this study offers a recognition and comparison of the most wide-ranging descriptions, implicit assumptions and typified images of the 'victim', 'offender' and 'community' within policy documents and legal statutes on restorative justice (RJ), produced in England andWales between 1985 and2015. Additionally, the research sketches out a historical contextualization of those normative representations. The questions which drive this study are: which images of the crime stakeholders are featured in the legal and policy regulations on RJ?…”

Restorative justice as feminist practice

“…Restorative justice similarly centralises the lived experiences of those who have been harmed (Maglione, 2017). Each of the main questions of restorative justice-what is the harm?…”