Street Violence as Conversation: Using CCTV Footage to Explore the Dynamics of Violent Episodes

• In Event: Crime Caught on Camera II

Abstract

It has been almost a decade since Collins (2008) advocated a shift from socio-demographic explanations of violence, to a more intricate study of situational dynamics. Specifically, Collins suggested that violence causality could not be understood by background variables such as sex, age, poverty and ethnicity, but rather by direct observation of the sequence of interactions between those present in violent episodes. The key tenet of this theory is that violence is situational, interactional and emergent. This emphasis on situational dynamics has been a major contribution to the study of violence. However, in this paper we will argue that much of the research work in this domain has prioritized the situational over the dynamic. For example, analysis of still photographs of violence allows micro-analysis of each slice of time at the expense of the more complex dynamics of the unfolding action. Analyzing a corpus of CCTV footage of street violence, and drawing upon insights from conversation analysis of social interactions, we propose an alternative approach. We explore evidence for interactional sequences in violence dynamics and evaluate the relative contributions of all those present within a violent incident. Furthermore, we record the most frequent patterns of interactions that may lead to violence (de)escalation. We conclude by highlighting how a dynamic understanding of the interactional sequence may help shape successful violence interventions.

Authors

• Richard Philpot, Exeter University, UK

• Mark Levine, University of Exeter, UK