When ‘ideal victim’ meets ‘criminalised other’: Criminal records and the denial of victimisation
| Author | Lauren Bradford-Clarke,Rhiannon Davies,Andrew Henley |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505221095068 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
When ‘ideal victim’
meets ‘criminalised
other’: Criminal records
and the denial of
victimisation
Lauren Bradford-Clarke,
Rhiannon Davies,
and Andrew Henley
University of Nottingham, UK
Abstract
This article critically examines the restrictions on access to statutory compensation in
Great Britain for victims of serious crime with criminal records. Drawing on original
analysis of Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority transparency data it reveals the
scale of the denial of victimisation as a so-called ‘collateral consequence of a criminal
record’. The policy is then critiqued on the basis that it reproduces the problematic
social construction of the ‘ideal victim’, delineates people with criminal records as
subaltern citizens and gives rise to harmful secondary victimisation of applicants
whose criminal records are often unrelated to their victimisation event.
Keywords
criminal records, less eligibility, victims, collateral consequences, compensation,
blameworthiness
Introduction
Policies and practices which lead to the less favourable treatment of people with
criminal records –often dubbed ‘collateral consequences’–are sometimes
Corresponding Author:
Andrew Henley, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham,
NG7 2RD, UK.
Email: andrew.henley@nottingham.ac.uk
Article The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2022, Vol. 69(3) 353–372
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/02645505221095068
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
defended on the grounds that they may address public safety concerns. For
example, in areas of employment involving close contact with children or vulnerable
people, ‘enhanced’criminal records checks give employers wide discretion to deter-
mine the suitability of applicants with an offending history (Thomas, 2007; Thomas
and Bennett, 2019). However, restrictions on a range of other roles, particularly in
relation to the administration of justice (e.g. police, prison, and probation officers)
have also been regarded as permissible on the basis that they address concerns
about ‘security’, or that they uphold the prestige of particular occupations
(Henley, 2018a). These sorts of justifications can be broadly understood as attempt-
ing to use criminal records as a ‘risk management’tool. Such approaches are not
entirely without merit, as criminal records can act as a good predictor of future
offending, albeit their ‘predictive validity’for future offending appears to be lost
after seven to ten years, an effect which is remarkably consistent across offence cat-
egories (Weaver, 2018; Hanson, 2018). The role of commercial interests and
technological innovation in driving ever-wider dissemination of criminal records to
private actors has given rise to what Corda and Lageson (2020) describe as ‘disor-
dered punishment’, whereby the capacity of government and individuals to control
the stigmatising effects of disclosure has been severely diminished.
‘Collateral consequences’may also be defended on the basis that they reflect the
censure attached to criminal offending. That is, on the grounds that (former) law-
breakers have, through their behaviour, rendered themselves ‘less eligible’in their
claim to the same rights and entitlements as other citizens (see Mannheim, 1939;
Sieh, 1989). Restrictions on access to social security or other forms of public assist-
ance are common in many US states (for instance, access to food stamps, student
loans and business grants, see Huebner and Frost, 2019). Such ‘desert-based’ancil-
lary sanctions are less common in the UK, although one notable exception is the
restricted access which people with criminal records face when applying for statu-
tory compensation following victimisation through violent crime. This ‘denial of vic-
timisation’(Henley, 2018b) is unambiguously about the perceived ‘deservedness’of
applicants for compensation rather than any ‘risk’which they may pose. It is there-
fore a particularly egregious example of post-sentence discrimination against those
who have already been punished by the criminal justice system and paid their
notional ‘debt to society’(see Hoskins 2019).
This article provides the first critical examination of the scale of this denial of vic-
timisation. It proceeds by, firstly, providing some background to the Criminal Injuries
Compensation Scheme and criminal record-based deductions from awards made
under pre-2012 schemes. It then examines how the post-financial crisis period of
fiscal austerity acted as the pretext for further restrictions on the eligibility of
people with criminal records under the 2012 Scheme. Secondly, the paper presents
findings from secondary analysis of Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority data,
with specific focus on decisions to reject claims or reduce compensation based on
applicants’criminal records. Finally, the paper argues that the denial of victimisation
contributes to the problematic social construction of ‘ideal victims’, casts former law-
breakers as ‘less deserving’citizens and compounds the trauma experienced by
many victims of serious crime.
354 Probation Journal 69(3)
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