Workplace violence: Extending the boundaries of criminology

Abstract

There is a growing body of research concerned with the prevalence, antecedents and impacts of interpersonal workplace violence which causes significant psycho-social injuries. Contributions have been made by sociologists, psychologists, organisational behaviourists and management functionalists. However there has been a paucity of attention by criminological theorists or empiricists despite the well documented costs for victims, bystanders, employers and the public purse. Drawing from key themes within existing literature, this paper applies constructive criminology principles and normalisation theory to extend the understanding of interpersonal violence within the workplace and challenges to prevention. This is not an argument for greater application of criminal law but rather an argument that such violence and consequent psycho-social injuries be recognised as a source of victimisation and a matter of justice.

The questionnaire for diagnosing mobbing in employees’ relationships

“…The damage of mobbing to health is discussed in scientific articles by the following authors: Duffy and Sperry (2007), Yildirim, Yildirim, and Timucin (2007), Testa (2013), Burgi (2014), Garot (2014), andSchindeler (2014). An essential factor for understanding the damage of mobbing to the physical and psychological health of each employee and the productivity of the organisation is to realise that violence is used at work.…”

Threats and Violence in the Care Sector

“…Occupational injury reports capture a portion of the most serious violence to which health care staff is exposed at work. If the societal tendency toward juridification and the responsibilization of the individual (Garland, 2001, p. 124, Schindeler, 2013) has influenced the way care staff approach the issue of threats and violence at work, then this should be visible in the occupational injury reports examined here, since it is first and foremost the most serious violence that requires interventions from external actors such as the police and the justice system. There is nothing in the material examined in the current study, however, that would suggest such an influence.…”

“…One of the most common ways of defining violence is to only consider forms of criminal violence and to argue that violence is the use of force that has been prohibited by law. However, while “violence” might conventionally connote physical attack, the notion of physical violence, as well as physical injuries, represents a surprisingly broad spectrum of incidents (Schindeler, 2013, p. 8; Waddington, Badger, & Bull, 2005, p. 149). However, in order to avoid problems resulting from the tendency for certain years to include more reports involving “minor violence” than others, since it is reasonable to assume that reports relating to this type of violence are those that are most affected by changes to reporting routines, and so on, the analyses that focus on changes over time will be based on reports relating to nonminor and serious incidents of violence.…”

Criminal Liability for Deaths in Prison Custody: The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

“…The hasty application of the Act to deaths in custody is largely attributable to the fact that prisoners did not have a powerful interest group (but only a few concerned members of the House of Lords) to agitate on their behalf for legislative reform in this area. Perhaps this is due to the conceptual individualisation and marginalisation of prisoners which ‘undermined the development of organized approaches to activism’ in respect of victims of workplace violence (Schindeler , p.374).…”