Petey,
Again, thanks for your reply. I would welcome the opportunity to read your thesis when it is published.
By interpreting the tragedy in victimological terms, you seem to be implying that what was, essentially, a large-scale accident should be considered through the paradigm of criminology: i.e. it was gross negligence manslaughter, thus criminal, not just an accident. I assume this reflects the verdict of the jury in the second inquest of 2016, but only one person involved in this has ever been convicted in the criminal courts: the club secretary for a technical health & safety offence. He was fined.
You admit that the case against David Duckenfield may not have met the criminal standard of proof. Where does this leave us, if we accept what I presume is your thesis, that this was a mass crime scene? How could the criminal justice and coronial systems be reformed to address 'social harms' where criminal proceedings leave questions of fact and culpability unresolved? Is there room for non-adversarial processes within the criminal justice system to acknowledge wider harm and give voice to condemnatory feelings and the anguish, grief and trauma of families and survivors, while acknowledging the lack of proofs necessary to establish individual accountability?
My research shows crowd behaviour played a negligible role.
JFT97
I am sceptical about that, and I suppose this is relevant to 'critical victimology' because I'm guessing your approach to the tragedy is to ask whether flaws in the handling of the incident and the apportionment of blame and responsibility reflected attitudes to Liverpool supporters - and football supporters generally - as a class.
I comment purely as a layman and I wasn't there, let me re-emphasise that, and I don't in any way intend to cast aspersions on people who died. How terrible to be informed of your son or daughter's death at a simple football match. My heart goes out to the victims, those who survived, and to the families and loved ones. I have been to football and rugby matches myself. My preference is rugby union, but I was also at Leeds United matches during that era, so have a broad understanding of it. Unfortunately, I do think that the behaviour of the Liverpool supporters as a possible factor in the tragedy has been intentionally whitewashed, partly due to the behaviour of the Fleet Street press in the immediate aftermath. They slandered and criminalised Liverpool supporters without restraint, which meant it became difficult for intelligent journalists to ask proper questions about the behaviour of Liverpool supporters and whether this may have been a causative factor.
I personally find it difficult to believe that the behaviour of the crowd would not have had an effect, especially if there were elements in the crowd intent on causing trouble. It absolutely must have been a factor, really. It's practically axiomatic. The real question is whether supporter behaviour was a causative factor or just one among a number of factors in the background that contributed to the larger picture.
I accept that the Taylor Report addressed the 'supporter behaviour' problem anyway, just without spelling it out. The problem there, though, is that Lord Justice Taylor went over-board in his safety recommendations and tamed and gentrified football culture.
I also raise 'crowd dynamics' as a separate thing to crowd behaviour. There may be factors in the physical environment and the architectural design and layout of the stadium (including things related to factors you highlight above) that will have contributed to the crowd movement and dispersal.