Abstract
Police are central to the statutory response to sexual violence, shaping the direction an investigation may take. Evidence provided by victims is also key to the processing of sexual assault cases. From a 2013 comparative qualitative study involving interviews with police officers in one province in Canada (n = 11) and one region in Scotland (n = 10) who investigate such cases, we discovered striking unanticipated differences between the two groups in terms of how they perceived victims and the evidence they provide. This paper presents a thematic analysis of these data and considers possible implications and explanations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 680-700 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Feminist Criminology |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 14 Jul 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2021 |
Keywords
- sexual assault
- victimization
- rape
- policing
- qualitative research
- women
- justice interests
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Law
- Gender Studies
Documents and Links
- White, D. & McMillan, L. (2021) [De]-Centering the victim: police perceptions of victims of sexual violence through a comparative lens of evidence collection and processing
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).