The case for a victimology of nonhuman animal harms

Flynn, Melanie and Hall, Matthew (2017) The case for a victimology of nonhuman animal harms. Contemporary Justice Review, 20 (3). pp. 299-318. ISSN 1028-2580

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Abstract

For the last twenty years ‘victimology’, the study of crime victims and victimisation has developed markedly. Like its ‘parent’ discipline of criminology, however, very little work has been done in this field around the notion of environmental victimisation. Like criminology itself, victimology has been almost exclusively anthropocentric in its outlook and indeed even more recent discussions of environmental victims – prompted by the development of green criminology – have failed to consider in any depth the victimisation of nonhuman animals. In this paper, we examine the shortfall in provision for and discussions of nonhuman animal victims with reference to Christie’s notion of the ‘ideal victim’ and Boutellier’s concept of the ‘victimalization of morality’. We argue that as victimology has increasingly embraced concepts of victimisation based on ‘social harms’ rather than strict legalistic categorises, its rejection of nonhuman victims from the ambit of study is no longer conceptually or philosophically justified.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: Victimology, victims, green criminology, animal law, animal studies, speciesism
Faculty / Department: Faculty of Business, Law and Criminology > School of Law and Criminology
SWORD Depositor: eprints api
Depositing User: eprints api
Date Deposited: 21 May 2025 13:53
Last Modified: 21 May 2025 13:53
URI: https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4663

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