DeAlmeida2024

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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
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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
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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’.

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