Abstract
This article applies a narrative victimological lens of inquiry to the memoirs of those wrongfully convicted of high profile politically violent offences arising from the conflict in the North of Ireland. Using these life stories of wrongful conviction, the article critically examines how nuanced and complex understandings of victimhood and blame emerge from within victims’ own testimony. While on the one hand, victims can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in simplistic ways that echo dominant paradigms found within the criminological literature, at the same time they can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in more sophisticated ways that reflect complex debates found within the transitional justice literature. The ability to take both a more generous approach to victimhood that recognises the harm experienced by others and a more critically self-reflective approach of one's own culpability, it is submitted, shows the potential value that proposed oral history mechanisms have in allowing different perspectives on victimhood and blame to emerge from the testimony of those who suffered harms like wrongful conviction.
Highlights
Recent victimological interventions in transitional justice (TJ) scholarship have explored constructions of victimhood (Bonacker, 2013; McEvoy and McConnachie, 2012), politicaluses of victimhood (Breen-Smyth, 2018; Druliolle and Brett, 2018; Madlingozi, 2010), victim activism (Kovras, 2017), and victim legislation (Jankowitz, 2018)
There is a sizeable literature on political imprisonment there (McEvoy and Shirlow, 2008; MacIonnrachtaigh, 2013; McKeown, 2000; O’Donnell, 2015; Shirlow et al, 2013) and political imprisonment has been earmarked as an area for thematic examination by proposed TJ mechanisms
The relative invisibility of wrongful conviction in legacy debates may reflect the fact that the most high profile cases of wrongful conviction were for Northern Ireland (NI)-related political violence perpetrated in England, with the failure to explore the harm further adding to an imbalance that overlooks the lived experience of those outside NI itself (Dawson et al, 2016)
Summary
Recent victimological interventions in transitional justice (TJ) scholarship have explored constructions of victimhood (Bonacker, 2013; McEvoy and McConnachie, 2012), political (mis)uses of victimhood (Breen-Smyth, 2018; Druliolle and Brett, 2018; Madlingozi, 2010), victim activism (Kovras, 2017), and victim legislation (Jankowitz, 2018). Accepting that victimological research must pay more attention to how an experience of victimisation becomes embedded in the victim’s life story (Pemberton et al, 2019b), it draws on the memoirs of those who were wrongfully convicted for Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombings in England in the 1970s to thematically examine how these victims interpret and present victimhood and blame through their own lived experience.
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