The DOI matches its Crossref record; 85 of the 85 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Bringing narrative victimology to transitional justice: Blame, victimhood and life stories of wrongful conviction
Open accessAbstract
This article applies a narrative victimological lens of inquiry to the memoirs of those wrongfully convicted of high profile politically violent offences arising from the conflict in the North of Ireland. Using these life stories of wrongful conviction, the article critically examines how nuanced and complex understandings of victimhood and blame emerge from within victims’ own testimony. While on the one hand, victims can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in simplistic ways that echo dominant paradigms found within the criminological literature, at the same time they can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in more sophisticated ways that reflect complex debates found within the transitional justice literature. The ability to take both a more generous approach to victimhood that recognises the harm experienced by others and a more critically self-reflective approach of one's own culpability, it is submitted, shows the potential value that proposed oral history mechanisms have in allowing different perspectives on victimhood and blame to emerge from the testimony of those who suffered harms like wrongful conviction.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Figures
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“While maintaining their innocence is vitally important to their self-identity (Hearty, 2021), the receptiveness of the wrongfully convicted to what Annie Maguire (1994:151) calls whispers of 'no smoke without fire' allows relational harm to impede upon their post-release readjustment.”
From The Zemiological Afterlife of Wrongful Conviction: Spoiled Identity, Repair and Survivorship (2024) · cites this paper as Hearty, 2021
In the citing paper
“Victim testimony can help to critique and problematise redress schemes, ensuring that these programmes accurately identify what harms the wrongfully convicted suffer in the longer term and how these can be best addressed (Hearty, 2021).”
From The Zemiological Afterlife of Wrongful Conviction: Spoiled Identity, Repair and Survivorship (2024) · cites this paper as Hearty, 2021
In the citing paper
“Departing from the criminal justice system's rigid way of 'seeing' and responding to the harms of wrongful conviction (Hearty, 2021), first-hand insights from victims offer a telling insight into the true enormity of the zemiological iceberg.”
From The Zemiological Afterlife of Wrongful Conviction: Spoiled Identity, Repair and Survivorship (2024) · cites this paper as Hearty, 2021
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates.
Pfautz, H. W., & Goffman, E. (1962) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2090043 · Cited by 8,308
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., & Roberts, B. (1978) · doi:10.1007/978-1-349-15881-2 · Cited by 3,981
The Society of Captives, a Study of a Maximum Security Prison
Levering, J., & Sykes, G. M. (1959) · The Journal of Criminal Law Criminology and Police Science · doi:10.2307/1141342 · Cited by 1,503
The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison.
Weinberg, S. K., & Sykes, G. M. (1959) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.2307/2089462 · Cited by 1,367
Christie, N. (1986) · From Crime Policy to Victim Policy · doi:10.1007/978-1-349-08305-3_2 · Cited by 1,231
Christie, N. (1977) · The British Journal of Criminology · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a046783 · Cited by 1,087
The reflexive interview and a performative social science
Denzin, N. K. (2001) · Qualitative Research · doi:10.1177/146879410100100102 · Cited by 893
Helping a Victim or Helping the Victim: Altruism and Identifiability
Small, D. A., & Loewenstein, G. F. (2003) · Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · doi:10.1023/a:1022299422219 · Cited by 891
Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective
Elster, J. (2004) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511607011 · Cited by 531
(2004) · Cited by 478
Research works printed but not linked: 12
- Arendt H, 1971, Social Research, 38, 417
- Armstrong P, 2017, Life After Life: A Guilford Four Memoir
- Bryson A, 2016, Hastings International & Comparative Law Review, 39, 299
- Conlon G, 1993, Proved Innocent
- Cray E, 1972, The Enemy in the Streets
- Hill PJ, 1995, Forever Lost, Forever Gone
- Maguire A, 1994, Miscarriage of Justice: An Irish Family’s Story of Wrongful Conviction as IRA Terrorists
- McCarthy C, 2013, Dehli Law Review, 32, 17
- McKeown L, 2000, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh, 1970–2000
- Mendelsohn B, 1956, Etudes Internationales de Psycho-Sociologie Criminelle, 3, 25
- O’Donnell R, 2015, Special Category: The IRA in English Prisons, Vol. 2, 1978–1985
- Ward J, 1993, Ambushed: My Story
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Secondary characters in narratives of wrongful conviction
Umamaheswar, J. (2022) · Crime Media Culture An International Journal · doi:10.1177/17416590221127291 · Cited by 7
Peters, B. C., Paoli, L., & Pemberton, A. (2025) · Victims & Offenders · doi:10.1080/15564886.2025.2525288 · Cited by 4
The Zemiological Afterlife of Wrongful Conviction: Spoiled Identity, Repair and Survivorship
Hearty, K. (2024) · Critical Criminology · doi:10.1007/s10612-023-09737-1 · Cited by 2
“…have used victims’ narratives to expose blind spots in official discourses, resettlement policy and practice (Naughton, 2007:5; Hoyle & Tilt, 2018; Hearty, 2021; Umamaheswar, 2022), to demonstrate how narrative helps victims work through a ‘spoiled identity’ (van den Ven & Pemberton, 2021), and…”
InfluentialSelf-citationExpanding wrongful conviction analyses: a framework to foreground temporality and change
Norris, R. J., Umamaheswar, J., & Drummond, C. B. (2026) · Crime Law and Social Change · doi:10.1007/s10611-025-10263-0
Metadata
- Authors
- Hearty, K.
- Affiliations
- Queen's University Belfast (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Hearty, Kevin
- ORCID
- Hearty, Kevin
- Venue
- European Journal of Criminology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-09-22
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1251-1268
- ISSN
- 1477-3708 (ISSN-L)
- 1741-2609
- OpenAlex
- W3201185705
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 1.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- European Journal of Criminology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Portal (Queen's University Belfast) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › War, Law, and Justice
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Memory, violence, and history
- Keywords
- transitional justice, wrongful convictions, victimhood, blame, life stories, memoirs, Northern Ireland conflict, oral history, victim testimony
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
