By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

social conditions, towards that which is visually entertaining yet simplistic in value(Turner, 1999). What has also become clear is that while fears and anxieties may notbe linked directly to crime rates, these feelings are closely linked to the massmedia’s representation of crime (Davis, 1952; Roberts, 2001; Salisbury, 2004).(b) The politicisation of crime and the changing role of the victimAs a result of the concerns that media coverage of crime generated, crime controlbecame increasingly central to political life. This politicisation has opened penalpolicy up to fierce debate from both left and right wing politicians who have taken tousing punitive law and order tactics in an attempt to gain support from the public(Garland, 2001). Prior to the 1980s, left­wing political parties mainly stayed awayfrom punitive policies and instead chose to advance crime policy through welfareprogrammes (Young, 2006). In contrast, right­wing political parties were advocatesof harsher criminal justice policies based around deterrence and individualresponsibility. Since then, however, these tactics have changed substantially. In1992, for example, the United States Democratic candidate Bill Clinton gainedsuccess using punitive policies in an attempt to outbid right­wing parties onpunitivity (Applebome, 1992). This punitive focus, on who can be the ‘toughest’ onlaw and order, has seen the attractiveness of slogans such as ‘Three Strikes andYou’re Out!’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’ grow as both left and right­wing politicians try togain public approval by being ‘tough’ on law and order.This politicisation of crime control has also helped to transform victimhood. Up untilthe 1970s, the focus was on the offender, and victims remained largely excludedfrom debates around criminal justice (Fattah, 1992b). When victim issues wereaddressed, it was mainly from groups drawing attention to the need for victimcompensation (Henderson, 1992). Since then, however, the development ofvictimhood has changed this substantially, initially prompted by the rise of thewomen’s movement. Groups campaigning on behalf of women were concerned withmaking changes to sexual assault and violent crime laws, as these were considered tobe the product of patriarchal power (Rock, 1986) 6 . However, more recent demands6At this time, feminists began to argue that the word ‘victim’ itself emphasised ‘passivity’ and‘powerlessness’, in contrast the active resistance to oppression many women had to display in theirlives in order to ‘survive’ (Walklate, 2008). Green (1993: 112) argues that this in effect has madefeminist criminology ‘to a large extent, victimology’, because of the ‘bourgeois analysis of women as15