Week 1: Hallo world!

This is the first post on the unit blog for Victims and Restorative Justice; thanks for checking it out.

I'll be using this blog to post feedback on our seminar discussions and any other ideas, thoughts and comments relating to each week's teaching.

There were some interesting discussions in the first week's seminars. Pulling together the comments from different groups, it seems as if people are definitely interested in

• how victims are treated within the criminal justice system
• crimes against women
• restorative justice, in particular how RJ works in practice

and that you're not particularly bothered about

• classical victimology (or any other kind of 'pure' theory)
• corporate crime
• compensation for victims

I'll try and take all of this on board - although I'm also aware that some topics, including crimes against women and RJ, got both negative and positive votes!

Other than that there's not a lot to say in this first week, except

• do read; the more you read for this unit the more you'll get out of it
• do read "The Ideal Victim" in particular; it's an easy read but there's a lot in there
• do start thinking about real-life examples of victims of crime, for the first essay
  
• do read "The Ideal Victim" (I know I've said this once already, but I would seriously recommend reading it twice - perhaps once straight through and once taking notes)
• do ask if there's anything you don't understand; and
• don't panic!

You can leave comments on this blog, although anything that's intended for me personally is probably better done by email.