This book examines the experiences of relatives of those accused or convicted of serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sex offences. A broader literature exists on prisoners' families, but few studies have looked specifically at those related to serious offenders, or considered their experience other than as prison visitors. Many of the difficulties faced by 'mundane' prisoners' families are magnified for the relatives of serious offenders, first by the length of sentence, and secondly by the seriousness and stigmatizing impact through association of the offence itself.
Families Shamed draws upon intense qualitative research which combines long, searching interviews with the relatives of serious offenders with ethnographic fieldwork over a period of several years. The book focuses on how relatives made sense of their experiences, individually and collectively: how they described the difficulties they faced; whether they were blamed and shamed and in what manner; how they understood the offence and the circumstances which had brought it about; and how they dealt with the contradiction inherent in supporting someone and yet not condoning his or her actions.
This is the first book to tell the story of serious offenders' families, the difficulties they face, and their attempts to overcome them. At the same time a focus on offenders' families also draws our attention to the ways in which women are affected by crime, illuminating the broader effects of crime and the criminal justice process on the proportionately greater number of women involved. It contributes also to wider debates about the social organization of the meanings of crime, and questions the tenability of some core policy assumptions about offenders and their families; the relationship between the state and the family, and its bearing especially on expectations about family responsibilities.

This book examines the experiences of relatives of those accused or convicted of serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter, rape and sex offences. A broader literature exists on prisoners' families, but few studies have looked specifically at those related to serious offenders, or considered their experience other than as prison visitors. Many of the difficulties faced by 'mundane' prisoners' families are magnified for the relatives of serious offenders, first by the length of sentence, and secondly by the seriousness and stigmatizing impact through association of the offence itself. Families Shamed draws upon intense qualitative research which combines long, searching interviews with the relatives of serious offenders with ethnographic fieldwork over a period of several years. The book focuses on how relatives made sense of their experiences, individually and collectively: how they described the difficulties they faced; whether they were blamed and shamed and in what manner; how they understood the offence and the circumstances which had brought it about; and how they dealt with the contradiction inherent in supporting someone and yet not condoning his or her actions. This is the first book to tell the story of serious offenders' families, the difficulties they face, and their attempts to overcome them. At the same time a focus on offenders' families also draws our attention to the ways in which women are affected by crime, illuminating the broader effects of crime and the criminal justice process on the proportionately greater number of women involved. It contributes also to wider debates about the social organization of the meanings of crime, and questions the tenability of some core policy assumptions about offenders and their families; the relationship between the state and the family, and its bearing especially on expectations about family responsibilities.

Since the 1960s, the field of victimology has developed into a variegated discipline with its own theoretical and methodological traditions. In the early 1990s two texts were published-Towards a Critical Victimology (Fattah, 1992) and Critical Victimology (Mawby and Walklate, 1994)-that concretized critical victimology as a paradigm within victimology. Since then, the field has remained conceptually stale and with few a few exceptions there has not been a considerable lacuna of works from a critical perspective. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities provides a rejoinder to the two aforementioned texts and demonstrate how critical victimology can be reconceptualized, where interventions can be made in this victimological paradigm, and possibilities for future theorizing and research in this provocative field. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology includes eleven papers on the forms of victimization and issues pertinent to victims written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field of critical victimology. It is interdisciplinary in scope and contains contributions from leading and emergent international scholars on victims and victimization. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology serves as a crucible to demonstrate the complexities of and the multitude of factors that interact to complicate victim status, the vagaries of victim response, and the phenomenology of violence and victimization.

Since the 1960s, the field of victimology has developed into a variegated discipline with its own theoretical and methodological traditions. In the early 1990s two texts were published-Towards a Critical Victimology (Fattah, 1992) and Critical Victimology (Mawby and Walklate, 1994)-that concretized critical victimology as a paradigm within victimology. Since then, the field has remained conceptually stale and with few a few exceptions there has not been a considerable lacuna of works from a critical perspective. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology: Interventions and Possibilities provides a rejoinder to the two aforementioned texts and demonstrate how critical victimology can be reconceptualized, where interventions can be made in this victimological paradigm, and possibilities for future theorizing and research in this provocative field. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology includes eleven papers on the forms of victimization and issues pertinent to victims written by leading and emerging international scholars in the field of critical victimology. It is interdisciplinary in scope and contains contributions from leading and emergent international scholars on victims and victimization. Reconceptualizing Critical Victimology serves as a crucible to demonstrate the complexities of and the multitude of factors that interact to complicate victim status, the vagaries of victim response, and the phenomenology of violence and victimization.