DeAlmeida2024
DeAlmeida2024 | |
---|---|
BibType | ARTICLE |
Key | DeAlmeida2024 |
Author(s) | Fabio Ferraz de Almeida |
Title | Counter-Denunciations: How Suspects Blame Victims in Police Interviews for Low-Level Crimes |
Editor(s) | |
Tag(s) | EMCA, Police interviews, Criminal offences, Suspects, Counter-denunciation, Defensive strategies, Victim-blaming, Conversation analysis |
Publisher | |
Year | 2024 |
Language | English |
City | |
Month | |
Journal | International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique |
Volume | 37 |
Number | 1 |
Pages | 119–137 |
URL | Link |
DOI | 10.1007/s11196-023-10060-9 |
ISBN | |
Organization | |
Institution | |
School | |
Type | |
Edition | |
Series | |
Howpublished | |
Book title | |
Chapter |
Abstract
This article explores the ways in which suspects attempt to make putative victims/complainants at least partially responsible for the incidents for which they are investigated, transforming themselves into the victim and the other into the perpetrator. Drawing upon conversation analysis, I examine audio-recorded police interviews for low-level crimes in England and in which suspects have constructed what I refer as counter-denunciations. I argue that suspects accomplish these counter-denunciations through discursive practices that involve, for example (a) contrasting the complainant’s actions with their own innocent conduct; (b) historicizing the event being investigated; and (c) discrediting the complainant’s character—stigmatizing. These practices have in common the suspects’ reliance on the relational and contextual character of the categories ‘offender’ and ‘victim’.
Notes