Introduction to special issue on Visual Culture and the Iconography of Crime and Punishment
| Author | Nicole Rafter |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480613510547 |
| Published date | 01 May 2014 |
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
Theoretical Criminology
2014, Vol. 18(2) 127 –133
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480613510547
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Introduction to special issue
on Visual Culture and the
Iconography of Crime and
Punishment
Nicole Rafter
Northeastern University, USA
Just before I started writing this introduction, I Googled ‘Afghan woman executed yes-
terday’ and got a verbal description, photographs, and a roughly shot video of the public
execution of a woman identified only as Zarmeena, mother of seven children, who after
a ‘family dispute’ had beaten her husband to death with a steel hammer as he slept (http://
www.rawa.org/murder-w.htm). Under Taliban law, she was to be killed by a relative of
the man she had killed. In the back of a pickup truck, held there by two other women in
deep blue burqas, Zarmeena was driven to a sports arena filled with ‘thousands’, includ-
ing mothers and children. Zarmeena herself was covered so completely in a parachute-
blue burqa that it seemed she couldn’t see at all. The two female guards helped her down
from the truck, led her to the center of the arena, and forced her to sit, after which a tur-
baned man put a Kalashnikov rifle to the back of her head and shot three times. Someone
tugged her burqa over the legs of her dead body, and then everyone walked away, leaving
a motionless, pale-blue heap (See Figure 1 on next page).
Conventional criminology would have difficulty explaining the meanings of these images
of Zarmeena’s death. The images tell us that the Taliban have power over life and death in the
areas they control, and that their justice system is fearsome and harsh. From the images we
learn that men—who judged and executed Zarmeena—have the power of life and death over
women. From the story we might surmise that in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan,
domestic violence is not an excuse for murder, or even a mitigating factor. We might also be
tempted to surmise that in these areas, parents may use an execution to teach values to their
children; but I think that is a misreading, for according to the accompanying news story,
One woman in a burqa, who did not give her name, but was running quickly toward the stadium
seats pushing her small children ahead of her, said: ‘This is the first time a woman has been
killed. I want to see.’
(http://www.rawa.org/murder-w.htm)
Corresponding author:
Nicole Rafter, Northeastern University, 400 Churchill, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, 02115, USA.
Email: n.rafter@neu.edu
510547TCR18210.1177/1362480613510547Theoretical CriminologyRafter
research-article2014
Introduction
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