ABSTRACT
In these final three chapters we explore some of the continuing absences from and newer presences on the victimological agenda. Goodey’s chapter continues the comparative perspective developed in Part Four as she discusses the increasing contemporary concern with victims of racially and religiously motivated crime both in the UK and Continental Europe. As with Miers’ discussion of criminal injuries compensation in Chapter 13, England and Wales has led the way in formulating responses to this kind of victimisation, though as Goodey’s chapter elucidates the influence of this response and its ability to travel to other jurisdictions is not even or consistent (a theme also addressed by Van Dijk and Groenhuijsen in Chapter 14). The variable impact that responding to such victimisation has had is analysed by Goodey in a number of different ways, from the problem of data collection – which the French would argue are by definition discriminatory criteria (hence no data) – to the more familiar (in the UK context at least) problems of identification, reporting and recording racially and religiously motivated incidents. It is crucial, of course, to set the rising recognition of this kind of victim problem within the wider social, political and economic changes that have accrued consequent to the growth and development of the European Community and the associated economic migration. In addition, it is also important to note the impact that both local and global terrorist activities have had on the growing political preoccupation with racial and religiously motivated crime, concerns that Booth and Carrington document in Chapter 15 in their more general analysis of victim policy in the Anglo-speaking world. Interestingly the question of terrorism is also a theme addressed by Mythen in Chapter 18. Goodey proceeds to develop her analysis of xenophobia with a useful discussion of the problems associated with the concept of ‘hate’ crime. The difference between law in books and law in action acts as a constant barrier to what she would call the delivery of ‘joined-up justice’ pointing to, in
a different way, one of the inherent problems of the victims’ rights stance discussed in several contributions in Part Three. Goodey never loses sight of the fact that more often than not the people most likely to be subjected to racial and religiously motivated crime are also the most vulnerable in society. Green introduced the concept of vulnerability in Chapter 4 and it is a concept that Whyte also draws upon in his discussion of one of the continuing absences from the victimological agenda: victims of corporate crime.
