DeAlmeida2024
| DeAlmeida2024 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | DeAlmeida2023 |
| 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, In press, Police interviews, Criminal offences, Suspects, Counter-denunciation, Defensive strategies, Victim-blaming, Conversation analysis |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2023 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique |
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| Pages | |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11196-023-10060-9 |
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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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