Victim-survivor views of the causes of crime, the aims of justice, and recovery
Grant details
Leverhulme Trust; £94,000
Project start and end dates
October 2023 – September 2026
Research team members
- Principal Investigator: Dr Diana Batchelor
- Research Partner: Dr Sri Wiyanti Eddyono
- Mentor: Professor Joanna Shapland
- Mentor: Dr Mark Brown
Background and aims of the project
People who have been victimised often ask “why?”: why the crime happened or why they were targeted. Yet we know little about people’s own answers to such questions, and about how these thought processes affect (or are affected by) their views of justice and their recovery.
This collaborative research project based in Indonesia and the UK explores the relationships between three aspects of victims’ experiences of crime: 1) their reasoning and beliefs about the causes of the crime they experienced; 2) their views of justice, how important it is to them, and how they think it should be achieved - including but not limited to the justice offered by the criminal justice system; and 3) their perceptions of their own mental and physical recovery process over time.
This project values the extensive time and energy that victim-survivors are known to expend on the question of why crimes happen, and it aims to find out how different ways of thinking about others’ bad behaviour can influence those affected by it. This knowledge in turn contributes to a broader understanding of how and why humans reason the way they do.
Methods
The project includes collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data in Indonesia and the UK. We are conducting interviews with victim-survivors who tell us in their own words about why they think the crime happened. The purpose of this study is not to compare the samples from the two countries, but to understand how people with different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences describe the causes of their victimisation. The interviewees also tell us about how they see the offender, what justice means to them, and how their views have changed over time.
We are also analysing quantitative data to further explore the relationships identified through the interviews. While this project prioritises and highlights victim-survivors’ own reflections, it also recognises that sometimes humans are influenced by factors that we ourselves struggle to describe. Therefore, the quantitative study complements the findings from the interviews, to shed additional light on potentially subtle and nuanced relationships between victim-survivor beliefs about the cause of their victimisation, the meaning of justice, and their own recovery.