The Violences of Men
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Profilers are notoriously slow to make their profiles available for outside scrutiny (unless they are shown to be incredibly accurate) and as a result a massive amount of incompetency almost certainly goes undetected. Overall, the book comes across as a student-friendly, although relatively expensive, textbook (indeed the book itself probably came, at least partly, out of Turvey’s desire to provide a textbook for students taking his own course in offender profiling). This book will not turn the reader into an instant profiler, but it arguably does provide more information on how profiles can be constructed from crime scene evidence than most other publications. For academics and students alike the book also benefits from having a good index and glossary. Turvey succeeds in bringing together a range of information relating to profiling in a useful, accessible and readable way. He has also included interesting chapters on topics not usually seen in the offender profiling literature. The chapter on criminal behaviour on the Internet stands out in this regard. Ultimately, though, this is not the definitive book on profiling and neither—it must be said—is it the best of the books currently available (although it arguably is the best if you are just interested in the US situation). That said, it does have much to commend it and future writers on the subject would be well advised to closely study its many good features. Andrew Silke Centre for Applied Psychology University of Leicester
The Violences of Men by Jeff Hearn London: Sage (1998) ISBN 080 397940 1 (258 pages, £14.99)
Reviewed by Nic Groombridge Hearn is painfully aware of the dangers of collusion in men researching men and addresses them fully—but at a cost. He spends five of the eleven chapters setting the scene and context before addressing the issues raised by the book’s subtitle ‘How Men Talk About and How Agencies Respond to Men’s Violence to Women’. A flavour of this can be seen in the preface when he says: I have experienced grave ambivalence in writing this book—between, on the one hand, a belief that it addresses urgent questions, is worth writing and needs to be finished, and, on the other, the unpleasantness of the task, the topic and the material. I have often been uncertain how to proceed and it has taken me longer than originally planned. Ambivalence, violence and writing are interconnected in complex ways (p vii).
Sixty men, between the ages of 19 and 65, were interviewed and given a pre-coded questionnaire. They were referred by sources as varied as police, prison, probation, social services, men’s programmes and none. Staff from these agencies were interviewed about the general issues and, with the permission of 41 of the men, more specific case issues. The range of violence covered ‘violent fantasies, abduction, assault and rape’ to murder, and were placed in the criminal justice system from none to life imprisonment. Perhaps predictably many had not been arrested or, if arrested were not charged and, if charged the charges were dropped. Thi
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