Random Violence: How We Talk about New Crimes and New Victims / Edition 1

by Joel Best

Overview

Random Violence is a deft and thought-provoking exploration of the ways we talk about—and why we worry about—new crimes and new forms of victimization. Focusing on so-called random crimes such as freeway shootings, gang violence, hate crimes, stalking, and wilding, Joel Best shows how new crime problems emerge and how some quickly fade from public attention while others spread and become enduring subjects of concern. Best's original and incisive argument illuminates the fact that while these crimes are in actuality neither new, nor epidemic, nor random, the language used to describe them nonetheless shapes both private fears and public policies.

Best scrutinizes the melodramatic quality of the American public's attitudes toward crime, exposing the cultural context for the popularity of "random violence" as a catch-all phrase to describe contemporary crime, and the fallacious belief that violence is steadily rising. He points out that the age, race, and sex of homicide victims reveal that violence is highly patterned.

Best also details the contemporary ideology of victimization, as well as the social arrangements that create and support a victim industry that can label large numbers of victims. He demonstrates why it has become commonplace to "declare war" on social problems, including drugs, crime, poverty, and cancer, and outlines the complementary influence of media, activists, officials, and experts in institutionalizing crime problems. Intrinsic to all these concerns is the way in which policy choices and outcomes are affected by the language used to describe social problems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520215726
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/02/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	237
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Joel Best is Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is the author of Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims (1990).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface

Chapter 1 Random Violence

Chapter 2 From Incidents to Instances:
The Media Discover "Wilding" and Freeway Violence

Chapter 3 Beyond Instances:
Institutionalizing Stalking and Hate Crimes

Chapter 4 Gangs, Conspiracies,
and Other Cultural Resources

Chapter 5 The New Victims

Chapter 6 The Victim Industry

Chapter 7 Declaring War on Social Problems

Chapter 8 Connections among Claims:
The Context for New Social Problems

Appendix: New Uiays to Study Media Coverage
of Social Problems

Notes
References
Index