Stories as property: Narrative ownership as a key concept in victims’ experiences with criminal justice

AuthorEva Mulder,Antony Pemberton,Pauline GM Aarten
Published date01 September 2019
Date01 September 2019
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818778320
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818778320
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2019, Vol. 19(4) 404 –420
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895818778320
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Stories as property: Narrative
ownership as a key concept
in victims’ experiences with
criminal justice
Antony Pemberton
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Pauline GM Aarten
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Eva Mulder
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Abstract
This article offers a novel approach to the difficulties experienced by victims in relation to their social
surroundings in general, and to justice processes in particular, by expanding on an emerging paradigm of
narrative victimology. For victims, ownership of their narrative is a key element of their experience, but
this ownership is contested. The article brings together a body of victimological literature drawn from
social and personality psychology, criminology and sociology to illuminate mechanisms underlying possible
tensions between victims’ narratives and other perspectives on their ordeal. These tensions are relevant
to understanding secondary victimisation in the criminal justice processes, as well as to understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of restorative justice as a possible avenue for meeting victims’ needs.
Keywords
Criminal justice, narratives, ownership, restorative justice, victims
Introduction
Forty years ago, it was safe to say that the victim was the forgotten party of the criminal
justice system, but given the level of interest from policy, practice and academia in the
Corresponding author:
Antony Pemberton, INTERVICT, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Email: a.pemberton@uvt.nl
778320CRJ0010.1177/1748895818778320Criminology & Criminal JusticePemberton et al.
research-article2018
Article
Pemberton et al. 405
current day and age this is no longer the case (Groenhuijsen, 2014). Within various
national jurisdictions the interest in victims has been steadily increasing, with the efforts
of the European Union culminating in the Victims Directive of 2012. The Victims
Directive is the clearest example of the legislative efforts to improve the rights, protec-
tion and support of victims of crime within our criminal justice processes.
However, victimological experience in criminal justice processes is still not much
different from what it was in the 1970s (e.g. Biffi et al., 2016). Reporting and attrition
rates (Daly and Bonhours, 2010), satisfaction with proceedings (Laxminarayan et al.,
2013) and secondary victimisation (Kunst et al., 2015) all confirm that the criminal jus-
tice system is still something between a large burden and a minor boon for victims of
crime (Pemberton, 2014, 2015). Some find solace, support or even emotional benefit in
justice proceedings, others still feel the experience of secondary victimisation most
keenly. The key question the current article seeks to answer is how the difficulties expe-
rienced by victims in justice processes can be clarified through the lens of ownership of
the story of their victimisation. The article brings together a body of victimological lit-
erature drawn from social and personality psychology, criminology and sociology in a
narrative perspective on victimology. This encompasses a brief overview of the narrative
nature of the experience of victimisation, as well as a set of social-psychological and
sociological mechanisms – the moralization gap (Baumeister, 1997; Pinker, 2011), the
justice motive (Lerner, 1980) and instances of stereotyping (Polletta, 2006) and framing
(Entman, 1993) – that can lead to pressure on the narrative the victim attempts to con-
struct in the aftermath of victimisation.
We will demonstrate that narrative ownership offers a novel and important frame-
work to understand victims’ experiences within justice processes, and elaborate on how
the formal criminal justice system reinforces much of these narrative pressures.
Subsequently, we consider whether restorative justice processes, which are generally
seen to offer victims more possibilities to express their story (e.g. Strang, 2002) and have
from the outset been conceived as a vehicle for retaining ownership (see Christie, 1977,
whose article inspired the title of our article), can offer an in route to contributing to
victims’ need to retain narrative ownership.
The Importance of Narrative in the Experience of
Victimisation
Recent years have seen an emergence of narrative criminology (Presser, 2009; Presser
and Sandberg, 2015; Sandberg and Ugelvik, 2016). Following the narrative turn in other
fields of social inquiry, criminology is increasingly alive to the role of narrative in the
study of how people understand their own experience and actions, in particular in rela-
tionship to their identity and the wider collectives to which they belong. The veracity of
these stories is not at issue, or at least not a primary focus.
Elsewhere we have argued for the additional development of a narrative victimology
with a similar focus (see Pemberton et al., 2019). Where Presser (2013) positions narra-
tive criminology as a means to deploy narrative approaches to understand ‘why we harm’,
a narrative victimology would focus on the storied experience of being intentionally
harmed, or wronged, by others. Severe forms of victimisation by crime can be conceived

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