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Abstract
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Let us begin with a thought experiment:
"Imagine a country town that experiences two concurrent horrors: A flooded stream that causes the drowning death of one young woman, and the murder of another young woman by an unknown assailant. Further, imagine that both deaths occurred in the same parklands and that the murderer appears to have been unknown to his victim. In the opinion of the police, the flooded stream will continue to pose a risk to human life, while the offender will continue to pose a risk to women".
Is it morally justifiable for police to provide safety advice to address one or both risks?
Surely, most people would regard warning the public about the flooded stream as not merely justified, but as morally required. After all, the job of police is to keep people safe, and this is best achieved by preventing them from entering harm's way. However, reactions to homicide prevention advice will be more mixed. Some people will regard the police responsibility to warn against an ongoing threat as self-evident. Yet others will worry that the warning engages in the morally problematic practice of 'victim blaming'.
1.1 What is Victim Blaming?
Victim blaming is the practice of holding people responsible when bad things happen to them. Psychologically, it is associated with belief in a 'just world', particularly with the idea that the world is just to other people, not merely to oneself (Hayes et al. 2013). As Double (2005, 22) observes:
"Persons who are cognitively or emotionally invested in the belief that the world is just are unlikely to think that bad things happen to persons who do not deserve them."
According to defensive attribution theory, victim blaming fosters feelings of safety by highlighting differences between the victim blamer and the victimised (Pinciotti and Orcutt 2020). A woman, for instance, might comfort herself that she is unlikely to be raped because she avoids dressing provocatively or consuming alcohol in public...
... 2.1 Floodwaters
In many parts of the world, driving over flooded roads and bridges is a danger that is regularly warned against during severe weather. In early 2021, for example, the following comments were made by an Australian politician with ministerial responsibility for emergency services, following the drowning of a man:
"The human cost of these floods has been brought into sharp focus in the most tragic of circumstances and I urge communities to continue to be cautious in the face of continued and imminent threats to life." (ABC News 2021).
These comments appear to be uncontroversial, and, to the present author's knowledge, they did not result in any controversy. Importantly, the comments did two things: They acknowledged the tragic circumstances with its "human cost", and they urged caution "in the face of continued and imminent threats".
Nevertheless, we would expect more controversy if, instead of commenting on a flooding death, the minister had made the following comments in response to the murder of a woman: "The murder of Miss Smith is tragic, and I urge women in the community to be cautious in the face of continued and imminent threats." The thought experiment with which this paper opened essentially combines the drowning and homicide scenarios and places them in the same parklands. However, are the two cases relevantly similar?...
Language: en |