NCJ Number
216058
Date Published
2006
Length
18 pages
Annotation
In arguing for a response to the victimization of older people that reconciles the apparently conflicting approaches of the criminal justice and welfare systems, this chapter emphasizes the concept of "social harm."
Abstract
The criminal justice approach to victimization views it as a crime that requires the identification, arrest, prosecution, and sentencing of the perpetrator. Welfare approaches focus on the needs of the victim and how they can best be met. This chapter first considers the barriers to an integration of these approaches. These include the variety of forms of victimization of older people and traditional criminological approaches to the victimization of older people. The chapter presents five types of extreme cases of victimization of older people in Great Britain. These cases demonstrate that the terms "crime" and "abuse" are unsatisfactory in reconciling the enterprises of criminologists who research criminal offenses against older people and social workers involved in studies of elder abuse. Further, criminology's traditional approach to research on the victimization of older people has relied on a socially constructed criminal law definition of "offense;" the false opposition between welfare and justice paradigms; the private space/public space distinction; the development of a victimology that has arbitrarily ignored older people in favor of the gender of victims; the heterogeneity of older victim groups; and the structural location of older people. The chapter concludes by outlining five reasons why the concept of "social harm" enables criminology to operate beyond a legally restrictive mandate to focus on how social order is produced and how harmful deviance is restrained. This leads to recognition that the source of harmful acts is the extent and quality of power relations, which are especially problematic for older people. 17 references