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The Victimology and Ecological Justice group brings together researchers from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Our aim is to explore what combinations can be created to highlight our teaching and research across the following areas:

• Gender, intersectionality and inequalities
• Victims and victimisation
• Policy and legislation 
• Implementation of reforms
• Impact on professional cultures
• Female offenders
• Ecological justice, wildlife crime, conservation and climate change

Victims of crime remain high on the political and criminal justice agenda following the wider politicisation of crime victims in the 1990s. Since then, the needs and rights of crime victims have been widely debated and remain a highly contested area for reform. Despite the introduction of Victims’ Charters and Codes of Practice, these entitlements remain discretionary rather than legally enforceable. Calls continue for victims to have legislative rights to be enshrined in a Victim’s Law and the findings of a recent public consultation are still awaited. 

Recognition of legitimate forms of victimisation have expanded significantly over the last three decades due to activism and campaigning. These include behaviours not previously recognised as criminal — for example, domestic abuse, stalking, sexual harassment and honour based violence — and new crimes resulting from developments in technology, such as internet fraud, cybercrime, and image-based sexual abuse (more commonly known as ‘revenge porn’). There has also been an acceleration of crimes that some thought no longer existed, such as human trafficking and modern day slavery.  

More recently, ‘green’ criminology has developed into a rich seam of criminological enquiry, enabling a focus on human-induced environmental harm, through the lens and development of Green Victimology. The United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly referred to as COP, has elevated the urgency. The discipline has flourished with a critical focus on the climate and environmental crises, to embrace both a ‘wildlife criminology’ (Nurse & Wyatt, 2020) and a ‘climate change criminology’ (White, 2020).

Teaching and related courses

• MSc Criminal Psychology and Victimology (Distance Learning)
• Our Working with Victims of Crime short course is studied by professionals working in the criminal justice system. In 2021, the course was adapted to provide a bespoke non-credit bearing short course for the South Korean Police Agency.  

The School of Criminology and Criminal Justice also delivers short courses on behalf of the , as part of their leadership initiative.

Researchers