Week 3

This week's lecture was all about the "Ideal Victim", Nils Christie's eccentric but hugely influential essay looking at what it takes to be recognised as a victim. (If you haven't read it yet, please read it now. It's short, it's well-written, it's thought-provoking and it's going to be relevant to most of the unit.) Although it's a short essay, there was quite a lot to get through - from mugging to marital rape to witchcraft to industrial accidents to restorative justice... - so I didn't have as much time to talk around particular topics as I would have liked. The seminar looked at the slightly different concept of the deserving victim; the reason for this was to encourage people to use their gut feelings about whether a particular victim seemed deserving or not, rather than working out the right answer from the definitions I'd given in the lecture. There were good discussions in both groups, although (once again) numbers for the 3.00 session were light-ish; if you want to transfer to that group, don't hold back.