Blamestorming, blamemongers and scapegoats: Allocating blame in the criminal justice process
Gavin Dingwall and Tim Hillier
Abstract
We live in a society that is increasingly preoccupied with allocating blame: when something goes wrong someone must be to blame. Bringing together philosophical, psychological, and sociological accounts of blame, this is the first detailed socio-legal account of the role of blame in which the authors present a novel study of the legal process of blame attribution, set in the context of criminalisation as a social and political process. The book identifies the problematic and elusive nature of blame and contrasts this with the uncritical way in which it is often used in the criminal justice pro ... More
We live in a society that is increasingly preoccupied with allocating blame: when something goes wrong someone must be to blame. Bringing together philosophical, psychological, and sociological accounts of blame, this is the first detailed socio-legal account of the role of blame in which the authors present a novel study of the legal process of blame attribution, set in the context of criminalisation as a social and political process. The book identifies the problematic and elusive nature of blame and contrasts this with the uncritical way in which it is often used in the criminal justice process. Using a range of examples, the book addresses a number of contemporary issues including moral luck, blame amplification and growing criminalisation. The authors conclude that whilst allocation of blame is often simplistic and arbitrary and reflects little more than the ability of the powerful to coerce the marginalised, deconstructing the process of blame attribution would allow more progressive alternatives to be advanced.
Keywords:
blame,
blamestorming,
blamemongers,
scapegoats,
culpability,
criminalisation,
harm
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781447305002 |
| Published to Policy Press Scholarship Online: September 2015 |
DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781447305002.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Gavin Dingwall, author
De Montfort University
Tim Hillier, author
De Montfort University
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