Where is Latisha's Law? Black Invisibility in the Social Construction of Victimhood

Laws named after specific crime victims have become increasingly common. These laws are part of a broader effort to downgrade the status and rehabilitative needs of offenders and to hear the voices and trumpet the legitimate concerns of victims-often as a means of justifying punitive crime control p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Justice quarterly 2017-09, Vol.34 (6), p.978-1013
Main Authors:	Kulig, Teresa C., Cullen, Francis T.
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	African Americans Crime Law named laws Offenders Protection race and crime Social construction Statutes Victimization Victims Victims of crime Vulnerability
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Laws named after specific crime victims have become increasingly common. These laws are part of a broader effort to downgrade the status and rehabilitative needs of offenders and to hear the voices and trumpet the legitimate concerns of victims-often as a means of justifying punitive crime control policies. Beyond the substantive merit of individual statutes, collectively these named laws provide a clear image of which victims warrant protection and memorialization: Victims who are vulnerable in some way, who are pursued by predatory criminals into their otherwise safe domains, and-above all-who are White. In this regard, an analysis of 51 named laws from 1990 to 2016 reveals that the vast majority of them (86.3%) honor White victims. In asking the question, "Where is Latisha's Law?," we seek to illuminate the virtual invisibility of African American victims and the implicit social construction of which lives matter more in American society.
ISSN:	0741-8825 1745-9109