Counter-Denunciations: How Suspects Blame Victims in Police Interviews for Low-Level Crimes

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 a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal for the semiotics of law = Revue internationale de sémiotique juridique Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 119 - 137
Main Author Ferraz de Almeida, Fabio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 2024
Subjects
Applied Linguistics
Fundamentals of Law
Law
Law and Criminolgy
Legal History
Philosophy of Law
Theories of Law
Victim-blaming
Conversation analysis
Police interviews
Counter-denunciation
Defensive strategies
Criminal offences
Suspects
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Summary: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’.
ISSN:0952-8059
1572-8722
DOI:10.1007/s11196-023-10060-9