Political Importance of Victims of Crime in England - Research Paper Example

The Nature and Implications of the Growing Political Importance of Victims of Crime in England and Wales Introduction By obliging the Parliament’s approval, after open deliberation by individuals who may be subject to recommended laws and by obliging that laws should affect uniformly everybody, the purpose of liberals was to lessen the possibility that law would be misused to benefit certain people at the detriment of others. As argued by Hume in the eighteenth century, aside from entirely personal allegiances three primary forms of political group were identified1: rooted in affection, such as allegiance to a kinfolk; philosophies such as religious dogmas; or motive such as interest in financial gain.2 Influence and power had been always misused to benefit the monarch’s preferences, the religion preferred by the aristocracy, and the commercial or propertied motives with power at court.3 The alternative of liberalism was for every member of society to pursue just those decrees that were for the interest of the general public. Traditionally, we have been aware of groups presenting rationales for laws to be ratified in order to proffer them power or advantage. Nevertheless, the belief that law should serve the interest of the public has usually made it imperative for anyone aiming for personal gain to argue that there is public gain concerned. Companies and merchants, for example, have not normally demanded immunity from competition so that they can generate higher revenues, but to secure employments and support the interest of all.4 Although several claims to act in the interest of the general public have been bogus, nonetheless the thought that law should benefit public good has curbed criminal behaviour. In the contemporary period, rulings benefitting trade unions should have warned use of the risks of granting privileged opportunities to organised groups. The Taff Vale Company in 1901 effectively prosecuted the union of rail workers for losses incurred during a protest.5 Consequently, the Liberal Government ratified in 1906 the Trade Disputes Act eradicating the liability of trade union during protests.6 Not like everybody else, trade unions were from then on able to breach contracts with no legal implications. Trade union immunity, by the 1960s and 1970s was being repeatedly maltreated and the legal protections by the 1970s were broadly viewed as meaningless.7 The victim became the persecutor and, after a sequence of protests where in union rights were exploited, the laws were abolished in the 1980s.8 In spite of this experience, partisan laws have been initiated in England and Wales, threatening the democratic principle of equality under the law.9 However victim parties are not merely political groups demanding privileged treatment. They also weaken a basic foundation of a liberal society, the members’ equal status under the law.10 The term victim thus far preserves its original significance, and victims thus far rouse common empathy from concerned individuals. However, to be labelled as a victim nowadays is to be given a privileged political treatment, which has no fundamental relationship with concrete oppression or actual struggle.11 Being a victim as a political category is best viewed as the result of a political manoeuvring by some factions intended for acquiring privileged treatment. In democratic societies groups usually mobilise to acquire privileges for themselves, but the growth in the influence and number of groups demanding politically-sanctioned victimhood creates several difficult issues.12 Victimhood is not attuned with UK’s legacy of liberal democracy in certain ways13: it is at odds with the legal and moral equality that strengthens liberalism; it undermines British liberal culture; and it weakens equality under the law.14 This essay will review and discuss the increasing political meaning or significance of victims in the UK, particularly in England and Wales. The Political Perks of Being a Victim in Contemporary Britain Primarily, the emergence of victimhood as means to acquire political privilege—specifically, acquiring power over the imposing machinery of the state—is in conflict with the legacy of liberalism in Britain.15 Why is this so? Because it addresses group identity rooted in birth, particularly racial affinity, as more essential than individual traits.16 This hacks the pillars of liberalism, which aims to tap the best in people by emancipating them from the fetters that may be enforced by their origins or histories. Among the major foundations of liberalism is the notion that people should be evaluated by the individual characteristics that they can adjust and not by the qualities attributed to them by birth.17 Second, the pursuit for privileged treatment has had a detrimental impact on Britain’s liberal mechanism and the political customs that cultivates it.18 In any liberal structure there is a conflict between two forces: deliberative democracy and majoritarian democracy.19 The British system is largely deliberative.20 Laws are built, not by acquiring power and imposing judgments, but through open discussion that depends on adjusting the judgments of others through the shared learning that could arise from thinking and listening before judging21, a perspective characteristically stated by Milton: ‘Let [Truth] and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?’22 Groups of victims raise a majoritarian perspective, which underlines acquiring power or privilege at the detriment of other people through the exercise of the state’s imposing powers.23 Britain is accustomed to interest groups pushing their side as a component of a democratic procedure that permits contrasting judgments to be heard and addressed through sensible discussion and negotiation.24 However, contemporary victim groups generate ingrained social divisions by identifying adversaries as abusers who not only should be overpowered by the state, but weakened by the state.25 It undermines the mutual relationship and toleration that have been fundamental to Britain’s political culture, and also inspires violence. The core premise of the developing victimhood culture has been that one party is the oppressor and another is the victim: ‘women are the victims of male discrimination; ethnic minorities of white discrimination; and disabled people of discrimination at the hands of the non-disabled.26’ All of these cases have specific agencies with imposing authorities to safeguard the victims: The Disability Rights Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, and the Equal Opportunities Commission.27 Furthermore, victimhood can shield a group from evaluation that would be exercised to the rest of the populace. It does so by claiming that detractors should be oppressors.28 For instance, the false psychiatric concept ‘Islamophobia’ implies not only that all judgements of Muslims are driven by irrationally overstated aggression or fear.29 It is a claim that any judgment of Muslims is proof of clinical disease.30 However, the category ‘Islamophobic’ is usually linked to sound judgements of certain Muslims whose actions have exposed them to valid criticism.31 Third, equality under the law has also been weakened, in two ways. The making of ‘hate crimes’ has undermined judicial and police objectivity.32 Several crimes are dealt with more harshly when they are religiously or ethnically worsened, hence dealing with the same crime as more severe when perpetrated against a racial minority member than when it is perpetrated against a white individual. 33 Also, laws against discrimination have been steadily modified so that they are no longer limited to disallowing discrimination against people due to their racial affinity; in contrast, they foster and even demand, privileged treatment of individuals identified by their group membership. 34 The most distressing outcome of the formation of power by victim groups is that Britain has become perplexed about the central components of its own democratic heritage. Consequently, Britain has become a weak guardian of its own cherished legacy of freedom. Core discussions about democracy, freedom, and moral equality have become obscured in a host of concern about evading crime even to individuals who are threats to peace and order. We are encouraged as people not just to prove, but expressively to feel, shared respect for the fundamental principles of liberalism and for opposing beliefs that are at odds with a democratic society, even those that openly call for its demolition. The population of protected groups is enlarging and the entire magnitude has become a dilemma in itself. Increasingly, there are smaller numbers of individuals left who are not able to assert victimhood. The government, from 2007, aims to form a Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) that will safeguard certain groups: the usual groups, in addition to those identified by religious affiliation, age, and gender.35 In doing so, it carries on with a procedure called the Race Relations Act, initiated in 1965, which resulted in the 1966 Race Relation Board, eventually changed into the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE).36 The subsequent milestone was the 1970 Equal Pay Act which was launched in the 1970s, when the Sex Discrimination Act has also been ratified.37 The Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) was formed in the 1970s.38 Two decades afterward passed by prior to the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, however it was not until the current decade that the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) was established.39 The Equality Act of 2006 formed the CEHR, which comes to force in 2007 and involves the task of the EOC and DRC from then on. It assumed the task of CRE in 2009.40 A pamphlet created by the Equal Treatment Advisory Committee intended for the Judicial Studies Board, the certified commission for counselling judges, opens with the declaration that: “Justice in a modern and diverse society must be ‘colour conscious’, ‘colour-blind’. And in order to emphasise the point, a list of nine ‘do’s’ and ‘dont’s’ includes: ‘Be ‘colour-conscious’ not ‘colour-blind’”41. However, law enforcement has utterly wielded. The rulings against suspected ‘hate crimes’ have become a justification for exercising police powers against blameless individuals who have had the boldness to express a view abhorred by a politically-labelled victim.42 The most detrimental episodes have transpired since 1998, when the constitution decided to address offences against politically-classified victims as more severe than offences against other people.43 Originally appropriated solely to race, the population of victims demanding privileged treatment has swelled dramatically. The Crime and Disorder Act in 1998 generated the likelihood that public order misdemeanour, harassment, assault, and criminal damage may be racially exacerbated.44 For instance, the average utmost punishment for standard assault is six months. It is increased to two years if racially incited. Muslims protested that they were not particularly covered and hence under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001, felonies may be religiously incited.45 Furthermore, the Powers of Criminal Courts Act of 2000, as modified, obliges the courts to take into account religious or racial aggression as an exacerbating factor when reflecting on the punishment for any crime that is not particularly religiously or racially incited under the Act of 1998.46 Before long other victim groups were claiming for privileged treatment. The Criminal Justice Act of 2003 obliges courts to take into account sexual orientation or disability as exacerbating aspects when deciding a punishment for any crime.47 The question is what have these official amendments implied in practice? Primarily, offences against politically-defined victims are regarded as more severe than those crimes against other individuals. And second, law enforcement has been exploited to silence legal public deliberation, under the semblance of deterring racially-aggravated crimes.48 The Preface mentioned the discrepancy in punishment between a case wherein the crime victim had been homosexual and another wherein he had not.49 A comparable discrepancy crops up when a crime victim has been murdered on racial proof. The basis for reckoning the minimum punishment for homicide is 15 years; however it is 30 years when racial provocation is involved.50 The disparity was emphasised in 2005 when two brutal homicides took place on the same day in 200551: Richard Whelan, a young white man, was murdered on a bus by a black youth who stabbed him several times because he asked him not to throw chips at other people on the bus. His murdered apparently carried a knife as a matter of course, but the murder was not considered ‘racially aggravated’.52 In the second case, Anthony Walker, a young black man of exemplary character from Liverpool, was stabbed with an ice-axe after he had been racially abused while waiting for a bus. The BBC was criticised for giving a great deal of air time to the murder of Anthony Walker and not mentioning the murder of Richard Whelan, so much so that it posted an explanation on its web site conceding that ‘we should have mentioned the Whelan murder, however briefly.’53 It is hard to explain why a racially-provoked crime should be regarded more severe that one provoked by utter hatred towards anyone who happened to pester the offender. As stated by Detective Chief Inspector John MacDonald, the investigator of Whelan’s case, to the BBC: “This was a totally unprovoked attack by someone who obviously carries a knife as a matter of course. Anybody could have been the victim of this crime.54” The discrepancy is the outcome of the dominant victimhood culture and we immediately have to re-establish our time-honoured dedication to legal equality. Conclusions A major underlying ground for increasing political importance of modern victimhood is imprudent empathy—imprudent because it ignores the negative effect on the victims’ behaviour and the broader implications for society. There are people who desire to do good, in part showing their righteous intentions, but also a component of self-centredness. Public awareness of issues confers emotional incentives, which in part makes up the occurrence of public shows of empathy, such as mass praying or wearing ribbons in empathy with victims. In several instances such shows can make a form of personal remedy. However, in their anxiety to show their dislike of discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, sympathisers contribute by elevating its political importance. In England and Wales there has traditionally been powerful cultural condemnation of discrimination. We hate being criticised by our histories or other attributed traits. We want to be treated for what we really are. But ironically, in spite of the apparent existence of opposition to prejudice based on attributed status, crime victims claim that group identity is the main category of individuals. Therefore, the increasing political importance of crime victims in contemporary England and Wales, or in the larger British society, is at odds with either democratic or liberal culture. References Cochrane, J., Melville, G. & Marsh, I., 2004. Criminal Justice: An Introduction to Philosophies, Theories and Practice. London: Routledge. Dignan, J., 2005. Understanding Victims and Restorative Justice. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Goodey, J., 2005. Victims and victimology: research, policy and practice. Michigan: Pearson Longman. Green, D.G., 2006. We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now! How Political Correctness is Undermining Our Liberal Culture. London: Civitas. Haley, J.O., 2009. Comment on Using Criminal Punishment to Serve Both Victim and Social Needs. Law and Contemporary Problems, 72(2), 219+ Hoyle, C., 1998. Negotiating Domestic Violence: Police, Criminal Justice, and Victims. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Silke, A., 2003. Terrorists, Victims, and Society: Psychological Perspectives on Terrorism and Its Consequences. Chichester, England: Wiley. Walklate, S., 2005. Imagining the Crime Victim: The Rhetoric of Victimhood as a Source of Oppression. Social Justice, 32(1), 89+ Walklate, S., 2007. Understanding Criminology: Current Theoretical Debates. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. Williams, B., 2005. Victims of Crime and Community Justice. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley. Van Djik, J., 2009. In the Shadow of Christ? On the Use of the Word ‘Victim’ for Those Affected by Crime. Criminal Justice Ethics, 27(1), 13+ Read More