Witness intimidation, forced migration and

resettlement: a British case study

Nicholas R Fyfe* and Heather McKayt
Situated within the context of geographical research on forced migration, this paper
focuses on the experiences of prosecution witnesses who have had to flee their
homes because of life-threatening intimidation. Drawing on in-depth interviews
with witnesses, it examines the nature of the threat they were under, their decision
to leave home, their life in temporary accommodation and their experiences of
permanent resettlement away from the danger area. The paper highlights the impact
of intimidation and forced migration on witnesses' personal geographies and, in
particular, their sense of ontological security and self-identity.

key words Scotland forced migration qualitative methods crime intimidation

witnesses

*Department of Geography, University of Dundee, Dundee DD14HN

email: n.fyfe@dundee.ac.uk

tDepartment of Social Welfare, Social Policy Agency, Private Bag 21, Wellington, New Zealand

revised manuscript received 20 October 1999

Introduction intranational movement of forced migrants. In

In recent years, the analysis of forced migration has
emerged as an important field of interdisciplinary
study, with significant contributionsfrom, inter alia,
political scientists, sociologists and historians, as
well as geographers (examples of research are
contained in edited collections by Black and
Robinson 1993; Bramwell 1988; Loescher and
Monahan 1989). Within geography, the study of
forced migration has embraced a diversity of social
groups, from refugees (as defined by the 1951
United Nations convention) to asylum seekers and
those fleeing industrial disasters; and a broad
range of issues concerned with the causes and
consequences of forced migration (for reviews see
Black 1991; Boyle et al 1998, 180-206). Despite this
breadth of geographical research, however, impor-
tant substantive, methodological and theoretical
aspects of the study of forced migration remain
underdeveloped. With only a few exceptions (such
as Robinson 1989; 1999), most empirical work
focuses on the developing rather than the devel-
oped world, and on the international rather than
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 25 77-90 2000
ISSN 0020-2754 0 Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2000
terms of methodology, most studies of forced
migration (like migration more generally) are char-
acterized by the use of large quantitative datasets
or documentary sources rather than intensive,
qualitative research strategies that allow the voices
of forced migrants to be heard (although see
Bascom 1993; Monzel 1993). And in terms of
theory, forced migration research has tended to
draw more on concepts from political, economic
and environmental geography (see, for example,
Bascom 1993; Black 1998; Wood 1989) than from
social or cultural geography.
Against this background, this paper attempts to
broaden and deepen the geographical contribution
to the analysis of forced migration. Focusing on
Strathclyde in the west of Scotland, the study
examines the experiences of prosecution witnesses
in criminal cases who have had to flee their homes
permanently because of life-threatening intimi-
dation by the accused or their associates. The
numbers of such witnesses are, of course, small
and they are normally involved in serious and
organized crime investigations. Since the early
78
1990s, however, concern at the increasing numbers
of cases involving the murder and attempted
murder of witnesses has prompted several police
forces in the UK to follow the lead of law enforce-
ment agencies in the US by establishing specialist
units to help witnesses and their families whose
lives are in danger to leave their homes and resettle
elsewhere in the country. With the exception of one
US study (Montanino 1984), the experiences of
such witnesses have never been examined before
but are clearly of relevance to those interested
in forced migration. Indeed, these displaced
witnesses would appear to fit well within existing
typologies of forced migration which emphasize
the social causes of movement and the limited
decision-making autonomy of forced migrants (see
Richmond 1988). Moreover, these witnesses dis-
play what Black (1991, 283) describes as typical
’refugee characteristics’, such as fears for their
safety, and find themselves in typical ’refugee-like
circumstances’ of being forced to resettle away
from their home area. Unlike many refugees
and forced migrants, however, most displaced
witnesses and their families are moved to accom-
modation similar to that which they were forced to
flee and do not suffer the loss of material posses-
sions associated with typical refugee movements.
The distinctive character of relocated witnesses’
experiences of displacement is also evident in the
secrecy surrounding their resettlement, the fact
that some may have to change their formal identity,
and the absence of contact with other witnesses in
similar circumstances.
To explore their experiences of persecution,
forced migration and resettlement, the paper
draws upon qualitative, in-depth interviews with
intimidated and relocated witnesses. This allows
the research directly to address concerns about the
way studies of forced migration, and migration
more generally (Findlay and Graham 1991; Ogden
1998; White and Jackson 1995), have yet to exploit
fully the potential of qualitative research. Indeed,
most refugee studies are guilty of ’dehumanizing
the experiences of refugees’ (Robinson 1993, 212)
and of neglecting ‘how it feels to be a refugee‘
(Monzel 1993, 118, emphasis in original). By con-
trast, this study makes extensive use of quotations
from witnesses in order to explore what it means to
experience life-threatening intimidation, to have to
leave home and to resettle secretly elsewhere in the
country. Finally, in terms of its theoretical orien-
tation, this study is closely informed by concepts
Nicholas R Fyfe and Heather McKay
drawn from social and cultural geography. Build-
ing on interests in the interplay between space,
mobility and subjectivity (see Pile and Thrift 1995),
witnesses’ experiences of intimidation and re-
location are used to explore issues concerned with
the meaning of home, ontological security and
self-identity. In particular, this study serves to
highlight how these normally taken-for-granted
features of social life are intertwined with indi-
viduals’ personal geographies and are therefore
acutely vulnerable to being destabilized by dis-
placement. To put this study of relocated witnesses
in context, however, it is first necessary to sketch
out some of the issues that lie behind the forced
migration of intimidated witnesses.
Witnesses, intimidation and relocation
Contexts of in f imidation
The two main contexts in which witnesses experi-
ence intimidation are the courtroom and the com-
munity. In the courtroom, the physical presence of
a witness in the witness box is a vital element in
any trial. Indeed, the behaviour and demeanour of
the witness while giving evidence has long been
recognized as being of enormous significance in
what has been described as ’among the most
charged of all secular rituals’ (Rock 1991,267). For
the witness, however, this can be an intensely
intimidating experience. This may be because of
verbal abuse and threats shouted from the public
gallery or, as highlighted by some rape trials, being
questioned by the accused (Fyfe and McKay 1999,
61-6; Maynard 1994, 26-9). In addition, how-
ever, the aim of a defence counsel is often ’to
make witnesses appear so inconsistent, forgetful,
muddled, spiteful, or greedy that their word
cannot be safely believed’ (Rock 1991, 267). It is of
little surprise, as Rock concludes, that witnesses
frequently leave the witness box ’angrily and in
tears’.
For many witnesses, however, actual or per-
ceived intimidation begins before they ever reach
court and is a feature of the communities and
neighbourhoods in which they live. Previous
research in metropolitan areas suggests that there
are three levels to this problem (Maynard 1994, 1).
At one level, there are victims and witnesses whose
perception of the possibility of intimidation means
that they are not prepared to come forward and
give evidence to the police. The most recent British
Witness intimidation, forced migration and resettlement
and Scottish crime surveys revealed that fear of
reprisals accounted for between 3 and 4 per cent of
all crimes not reported to the police, rising to as
high as 14 per cent of assault and robbery cases,
where victim and offender are more likely to know
each other and opportunities for intimidation are
therefore greater (see Mirlees-Black et aZl998; MVA
1998). More qualitative evidence relating to this
type of intimidation emerged in Evans et al‘s (1996)
ethnographic study of crime in an inner-city en-
vironment. There they found that the pressure and
influence of gang activity meant that many victims
of crime were no longer prepared to report
offences. Indeed, the researchers identified a
specific location used for ‘public shaming cere-
monies’ where graffiti was written about people
believed to be ’grasses’ because of assisting the
police with the investigation of crime (Evans et a1
1996, 371).
A second level of community- or neighbourhood-
based intimidation involves actual physical assaults
or damage to property to deter victim and non-
victim witnesses from either reporting a crime or
giving evidence at court. The Home Office study of
high-crime housing estates (Maynard 1994, 35)
found that 13 per cent of crimes reported by victims
and 9 per cent of crimes reported by witnesses lead
to this type of intimidation. Finally, there is a third
level of intimidation involving a high risk of serious,
even life-threatening, intimidation of witnesses and
their families, which is typically linked to serious
and organized crime investigations. These are the
witnesses who form the main focus of the study
reported here. Although within the context of the
criminal justice system as a whole the numbers of
such vulnerable witnesses are thought to be small,
those working within the criminal justice system
believe they are increasing (see Fyfe and McKay
1999).In terrorist and drugs-related cases in particu-
lar, violent intimidation is viewed as a growing prob-
lem, while, more generally, the wider use of DNA
and other forensic evidence means that intimidating
witnesses provides one of the few areas available
to the accused and their associates to weaken the
prosecution case (see Greig 1994).
Strategies of prevention
A wide range of strategies exist to try to combat
witness intimidation in both the courtroom and
the community, many of which depend for their
effectiveness on the control of space and spatial
79
relations. In the context of the courtroom, alter-
ations to court design to ensure that prosecution
witnesses have separate waiting facilities can
reduce the risk of witnesses encountering the
accused or their associates within the court build-
ing. Live CCTV links can also be used to enable
children and other vulnerable or intimidated
witnesses to give evidence from another room
within the court building or from a location outside
the court. In the context of the community, the
police can conduct house-to-house calls on neigh-
bours of witnesses to reduce the possibility that a
witness will be identified. There are also more
general community-based schemes that involve
interagency cooperation between the police, hous-
ing departments and victim support groups to
tackle the problem of people afraid to come
forward as witnesses (Home Office 1998).
In relation to the most serious cases of intimi-
dation, however, such strategies are rarely suf-
ficient to ensure the safety of witnesses. In these
cases, more radical approaches have been devel-
oped involving the permanent relocation of wit-
nesses to safe areas. This approach to witness
protection began first in the US against a back-
ground of the murder and serious intimidation of
potential witnesses in cases involving major rack-
eteers and drug dealers. Drawing on the resources
of the US Marshals service, the US Congress estab-
lished a Federal Witness Security Program (WIT-
SEC) in 1970 to organize the secret and permanent
relocation of witnesses and their families to places
of safety. Those admitted to the program will often
have their identity changed, and are required to
sever all ties with their home area. Described as
’the most unusual service ever offered by any
government [during] peacetime’ (Graham 1985,47)
and ’the most effective law enforcement tool for
organized crime we currently possess’ (Montanino
1987,394), WITSEC had, by 1984, moved over 6000
witnesses and 8000 dependants, with new
witnesses entering the program at a rate of 30 per
month.
Compared with the US, formal witness re-
location programmes in the UK are largely in their
infancy. With the exception of the Metropolitan
Police and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who
have protected witnesses in cases involving organ-
ized crime and terrorist offences since the late
1970s, most forces have relied on an ad hoc response
to cases of serious intimidation. During the
1990s, however, a further six police forces have
80
Table I General profile of witnesses interviewed
Witnesses permanently relocated with programme assistance
Witnesses permanently relocated without programme assistance
Witnesses who remained in their home
established specialist units to relocate witnesses
and their families whose lives are in danger.
Modelled largely on the operation of WITSEC,
these units secretly move those at risk first to
temporary accommodation outside the danger area
and then on to a place of permanent resettlement.
As far as possible, the witnesses relocated neither
materially benefit from relocation (because of con-
cern that this would taint their evidence in the eyes
of the court) nor are materially disadvantaged
(they are, for example, offered similar accommoda-
tion to that which they leave behind). Neverthe-
less, forced to leave their homes as a result of
threats to their lives and to the lives of members
of their family, and to resettle elsewhere in the
country where they must sever all links with their
former home area to ensure their safety, these
witnesses and their families are clearly subjected to
intensely disturbing and disorientating experi-
ences. After an outline of the research context and
methodology, the remainder of the paper will
draw on interviews with these forced migrants
to examine their experiences of intimidation,
movement and resettlement.
Researching witness intimidation
The research reported here formed part of a
14-month study of witness intimidation and pro-
tection in Strathclyde in the west of Scotland,
which includes Glasgow. Concern at the murder
and serious assault of witnesses in this area
prompted Strathclyde Police to establish a Witness
Protection Programme (here after referred to as the
Programme) in 1996 to provide specialist relocation
assistance for witnesses to serious crimes who are
at risk from potentially life-threatening intimi-
dation. To evaluate this Programme and the
problem of witness intimidation in Strathclyde
more generally, the Scottish Executive (formerly
the Scottish Office) commissioned us to undertake
Nicholas R Fyfe a n d Heather M c K a y
Police assessment of level of threat to witness
Level I zuitiiesses Leoel 2 witnesses
14 -
1 3
5 5
the research. As a piece of policy research, it was of
course located within 'the confines of state(d) aims
and objectives' (Peck 1999, 131) set out in a
research brief. This included examining the ex-
periences of intimidated and relocated witnesses,
which raised two immediate methodological
issues. First, a way of identifying a population of
intimidated and relocated witnesses was needed
from which to draw a sample. Second, given that
our preferred research strategy was to conduct
in-depth interviews with witnesses so that we
could develop an interpretative understanding of
the meaning of intimidation and relocation, we
needed to know whether we would be allowed
face-to-face contact, something that had never
been attempted before with relocated witnesses.'
To address these methodological concerns, the
Scottish Executive negotiated a research access
agreement with Strathclyde Police, the key local
'gatekeeper' to information about intimidated wit-
nesses. Under this agreement, the police completed
'witness profile forms', which recorded anonym-
ized details of individual cases of witness intimi-
dation and indicated whether the witness was
willing to be interviewed about their experiences.
The police also agreed to facilitate access to any
witnesses who had agreed to be interviewed,
including those who had been secretly relocated.
Over 23 months, 117 cases of witness intimidation
were recorded on the witness profile forms, involv-
ing 142 witnesses of whom 83 indicated a willing-
ness to be interviewed. These witnesses were
recontacted by the police before the interview
phase of the research began, to ask whether they
were still prepared to be interviewed; this yielded
28 respondents. While these respondents were, of
course, self-selecting, they did provide a cross-
section of different circumstances, as summarized
in Table I.
Twenty respondents were what the police
termed Level 1 witnesses, meaning that they were
assessed by the police to be at a high or very high
Witness intimidation,forced migration and resettlement
risk of life-threatening intimidation; eight were
assessed as Level 2 witnesses, the subject of less
serious forms of intimidation. Fourteen Level 1
respondents had been moved by the Programme.
A further four respondents had also moved, but
without Programme assistance, while the remain-
ing ten witnesses had either stayed in their home
or only moved away temporarily.
Most of the interviews were conducted by one
of the authors (McKay) and lasted between 45
minutes and three hours. All the interviews were
tape-recorded with permission and later tran-
scribed. The interview schedule was drawn up
within parameters set by the Scottish Executive,
Strathclyde Police and Crown Office (the public
prosecuting authority in Scotland) designed to
ensure that the information collected did not risk
compromising the security of witnesses or address
issues that might be subject to criminal proceed-
ings. The schedule therefore consisted of quite
specific questions covering the nature of the intimi-
dation the witnesses suffered and their responses
to it; their decision to leave home; the impact of
relocation on their sense of safety; and the diffi-
culties associated with resettlement in a new com-
munity. However, given the significant security
considerations associated with the research, neither
the identity nor personal background of any of
the witnesses interviewed was revealed to the
researchers, nor (for those relocated) any infor-
mation about where they had moved from or to.*
Little contextual information can therefore be pro-
vided about witnesses in relation to individual
quotations, although a distinction will be made
between Level 1 witnesses and Level 2 witnesses.
In terms of the interviewed witnesses’ overall pro-
file, however, eleven were male and 17 were
female; their average age was 33; the crimes they
had witnessed included murders, serious assaults,
rape and robbery; and nine of the interviewees
were victim witnesses.
The transcripts of the interviews were read many
times by each author and indexed according to
themes identified in the relevant literature on
fear and forced migration, as well as for issues
mentioned by the witnesses themselves. Like
Cloke et a/ (1997,215), however, we recognize ’our
central role as intellectual gatekeepers over what
should or should not be included’ in the following
discussion (see also Bailey ef a/ 1999; Baxter and
Eyles 1997). In the organization, analysis and pres-
entation of the material from the interviews, our
81
broad aim has been to use witnesses’ discourses
on fear and intimidation, forced migration and re-
settlement to highlight issues which reveal similari-
ties as well as differences with themes that have
emerged from previous research. Although the
analysis is structured around the chronological
sequence of stages which, it is claimed, typify the
forced migration or ’refugee experience’ (namely,
the nature of the threat, the decision to flee, life in
temporary accommodation and resettlement: Boyle
et a1 1998,1914), within these broad stages we have
focused our attention on specific issues relating to
the spatiality and social relations of intimidation;
ontological security and the meaning of home;
and biographical continuity and self-identity.While
some of these issues feature in previous studies of
fear, intimidation and forced migration (Evans et a/
1996; Montanino 1984; Valentine 1998), the particu-
lar circumstances of witness intimidation and re-
location allow these issues to be brought together in
a unique and original way. Moreover, the extensive
use of direct quotations from different respondents
means not only that witnesses’ voices play a signifi-
cant role in the following narrative but that it is
possible to highlight both commonalities and differ-
ences between individual witnesses’ perceptions
and experiences.
The knowledge generated by the in-depth inter-
views with witnesses must, of course, be under-
stood as situated or partial. Indeed, reflexive
consideration of the research context and research
process clearly indicates that, as a piece of policy
research, these interviews were inevitably en-
tangled within a complex web of power relations
between ’the client’ (the Scottish Executive), the
gatekeepers (Strathclyde Police), the researchers
and the researched. Such power relations are
normally portrayed negatively. As Peck (1999,131)
observes, policy research has become ‘the grey
”other” of academic research’, tainted by its
association with cash, clients and contracts. By
contrast, however, we would argue that the policy
context and power relations of this study enabled
rather than constrained the research. Without the
access agreement with the police - secured by the
Scottish Executive - it would simply have been
impossible to carry out in-depth interviews with
witnesses. Of course, this was not unproblematic
and our close association with the Scottish Execu-
tive and the police in the eyes of witnesses was
a source of some concern when conducting the
interviews3 It would be misleading, however, to
82
characterize the relationship between geography
and all policy research as ‘positively antagonistic’
and to dismiss the knowledge produced as narrow,
technical and shallow (see Peck 1999, 131-2). As
the following analysis of the interview transcripts
reveals, the policy context of this study provided
the opportunity to develop a rich, interpretative
and deep understanding of witnesses’ experiences
of intimidation and relocation, and therefore to
further understanding of forced migration.
The nature of the threat
The witnesses interviewed had experienced a wide
range of intimidation. Often this took the form of
verbal abuse and threats to their life and property,
a pattern similar to that revealed by other research
(see Dowds and Budd 1987; Maynard 1994). In
some cases these were one-off attempts to frighten
the witness either at the time or soon after the
original offence was committed, while other wit-
nesses experienced a more sustained campaign of
verbal abuse after the offence was reported:
I got told that if I went to the police I was going to get
shot. I took this very seriously. I stayed on the same
estate as them. When they did it they said, ’Stick us in
and yar fuckin dead; you are getting it again’. That was
when I was lying in the street. (Level 1 witness)
I have had threats like, ’You will get your’s’, ’You better
watch your back‘, ‘It will not be long’ ... Never any-
thing physical, just verbal, trying to make you feel as
uncomfortable as they possibly can. (Level 2 witness)
For several witnesses to serious crimes, however,
the intimidation they experienced involved not
only threats but physical assaults and damage to
their property. This intimidation typically became
more intense after the decision to prosecute, and in
some cases witnesses experienced serious attempts
on their life:
I was getting a lot of threats and someone had already
tried to knock me down in a car. I had my windows
smashed and my name splashed across walls in spray
paint that I was a ’grass’ ... After that they tried to blow
my house up ... After that the police heard that I was to
get shot. (Level 1 witness)
I had a shot gun put to my head ... then ... we received
a letter that threatened my wife and the weans. (Level
1 witness)
While these quotations provide concrete examples
of the varying severity of intimidation, the inter-
Nicholas R Fyfe and Heather McKay
views also yielded important insights into the
spatiality of the intimidation, the social relation-
ships between witnesses and their intimidators,
and the effects of the intimidation on witnesses’
use of space.
The spatiality of intimidation
The unreliability of much of the statistical data on
intimidation means that conventional attempts at
mapping intimidation are fraught with difficulties.
Nevertheless, witnesses’ descriptions of their
intimidation provide a vivid picture of the spaces
and places where threats were directed. In a few
cases this included the homes of relatives and
friends of witnesses. Others experienced threats
in public spaces, ranging from attempts to run
them down with a car to verbal and non-verbal
intimidation on the street:
They [the relatives of the witness] were being swore at,
spat at, their bins set on fire, her windows smashed,
things written on her wall with paint. (Level 1 witness)
They go out of their way to stick themselves in front of
you ... If I was coming up the street ... they can pass you
by but they would not. They will slow their pace down
just to stay right behind you, so you know they are
there. You can stop and they still do not pass by. They
will stop. (Level 2 witness)
For the majority of witnesses, however, the over-
whelmingly spatial focus of any intimidation was
their home. In exceptional cases, this took the
form of a direct physical attack on the witness’s
property, involving the smashing of windows or
the use of petrol bombs. More common, however,
were threats made via telephone calls and letters to
the home of the witness or by intimidators simply
establishing their visible presence near the home of
the witness in order to frighten them:
They said they would murder our child if we said
anything to the police. We were sent cards through the
post saying, ’Say nothing, do nothing and you will be
alright’. (Level 1 witness)
He left threatening messages on the answering
machine. I went to try and get it sorted out ... and that
is when he shot and stabbed me. (Level 1 witness)
He was standing outside the house with a group of his
pals and we pulled up in the car and we were going
inside the house and they just stood staring at us. Not
one of them said a word to us but the fear that night
was unbelievable ’cos they did not have to say
anything. (Level 1 witness)
Witness intimidation,forced migration and resettlement
The significance of this intimidation cannot, of
course, be understood in purely spatial terms. As
Valentine’s (1998) account of her own harassment
vividly reveals, acts of intimidation also challenge
and violate the often taken-for-granted meanings
of the home as a controllable, safe and personal
space (see also Rapport 1995; Sibley 1995;
Somerville 1992). As the quotations illustrate, the
meaning of the home as a place of privacy and
exclusion is clearly undermined by the intrusion
of intimidators through telephone calls, letters or
simply staring through a window. Indeed, the
palpable sense of outrage at this violation of
private space is clear from this witness:
He came up to the house and said he was tanning the
house and that he was getting someone from Glasgow,
d hit man to shoot my husband. The house was getting
set on fire ... so we were not sleeping at night ... He
came to my doorstep, threatening me at my own house.
(Level 2 witness)
As this and the other quotations also indicate,
however, intimidation undermines the meaning of
the home not only as a place of physical safety but
also as a place of ontological security. As Giddens
cogently argues, ontological security refers to those
feelings of reliability and trust in relation to seem-
ingly trivial aspects of day-to-day social interaction
that are vital to an individual’s sense of psycho-
logical well-being (see Giddens 1991, 3642).
Although the notion of ontological security might
be challenged for relying on an idealized notion of
home or community, it is clear that many of the
intimidated witnesses found it difficult to cope
with what are normally regarded as taken-for-
granted aspects of social life and social interaction
in the home. Some were unable to sleep at night,
while others felt a sense of anxiety whenever
letters arrived or the doorbell or the telephone rang
(see also Valentine 1998).
The social relations of intimidation
Focusing exclusively on the spatiality of intimi-
dation is not sufficient to understand why the
threats against the witnesses were so significant.
Consideration also needs to be given to the inter-
play between space and the social relations of
intimidation. Most of those interviewed were
witnesses to interpersonal violence (murders,
serious assaults and robberies), crimes typically
embedded in a network of local social relations in
which victims, offenders and potential witnesses
83
are already known to each other (see Levi 1997).
Indeed, many of the witnesses acknowledged some
form of prior relationship with the offender(s),
perhaps as a friend or criminal associate and, given
that most of the witnesses lived in close geographi-
cal proximity to their intimidator, as a neighbour:
I was brought up with the guy. I have lived with the
guys in the same area and gone to school with them all
and I ran around with them all and was pally with
them all. (Level 1 witness)
I have known all of them except the main perpetrator
who is now in prison since they were babies. I had
known him for about five years but only met him half
a dozen times. (Level 1 witness)
These social and spatial relationships are of intense
significance in understanding the nature and
impact of intimidation. For witnesses, their private
fears concerning their vulnerability are normally
well grounded in their local knowledge of the
intimidators’ often violent history. For intimi-
dators, knowledge about the family of a witness
can be used to increase the pressure on the witness
to acquiesce to demands:
One night we were sitting. It was dark outside, the
blinds were up, my wife was sitting ironing and the
weans were playing about. I heard someone at the door
and there was a letter lying. I opened it and it stated
that basically when I went to court to give my evidence,
I was to say that someone else did it. If I did not do that
they knew which school my kids went to; they knew
where my wife worked and they were going to get to
her and they were going to get to my weans. (Level 1
witness)
For many witnesses, however, it was not simply
their relationship with their immediate intimi-
dators that was of concern. They were also aware
that, by assisting a police investigation, they had
transgressed local community norms concerning
’grassing’, a term whose meaning extends beyond
simply naming accomplices to embrace any com-
munication with those in authority (see Evans et al
1996, 365). Indeed, as an earlier quotation indi-
cated, one form of intimidation experienced by
witnesses involved having their name painted on
walls identifying them to the whole community as
a ‘grass’. Having themselves often been socialized
into a local culture of ‘no grassing’, many of the
witnesses were well aware that, having broken this
code, they now risked hostility from not just the
accused but also others in the community:
84
That [not to ’grass’] was the upbringing that I had ... It
was in the group of people that I hung about with. I am
not talking about criminals or anything like that. I am
talking about your local street youths ... Back than, aye,
I had that upbringing, ‘Don’t grass. You don‘t shop a
mate’. (Level 1 witness)
Especially on the estates, everyone knows everyone,
and all the dodgy punters and that, and grasses are not
tolerated on estates. (Level 1 witness)
These witnesses’ fears appear to confirm the exist-
ence of territorially based cultural values regarding
contact with the police (as highlighted by other
studies: Evans et al 1996), which are vital to under-
standing the meaning, social significance and local
consequences of intimidation. Indeed, as is dis-
cussed later, this community hostility was suf-
ficient in the case of some witnesses to force them
to leave their homes.
Impact on the use of space
Like the fear of crime more generally (see Pain
1997; Smith 1987), the cumulative effect of intimi-
dation by the offender and their associates, as well
as the fear of community-wide hostility, had
important consequences for witnesses’ lifestyles,
mobility and behaviour. At one level this was
reflected in the way some witnesses, often with
police assistance, adopted various forms of ’target
protection’ at their home, including installing
house alarms, surveillance cameras and panic
buttons, and carried personal attack alarms and
mobile telephones when outside the home. Such
measures were, however, typically combined with
‘avoidance tactics’ involving the disruption of
normal spatial routines in their home area. Such
‘coping strategies’ (see Pain 1997, 234) allowed
witnesses and their families to sustain a restricted
level of spatial mobility and social interaction:
I never go in that direction [towards the house of the
intimidator]. If I have to go round in that area I go the
other way, I avoid his street. I have never passed his
door since January last year. (Level 2 witness)
Like I say, I do not feel safe ...We do not go out. The
only time we go out is to do our shopping or back and
forward to my Mum’s ... and that is it. (Level 2 witness)
However, for many witnesses, such disruption to
their routine activities was indicative of a sense of
ontological insecurity. For such witnesses, being in
public space, for example, demanded a constant
state of vigilance and a reading of these spaces for
signs of danger.
Nicholas R Fyfe and Heather McKay
1 was sitting on the bus and looking around me all the
time, making sure no one was coming up behind me.
You never know with people like that. Hit men will do
you anywhere. You hear it in the news and papers.
They will do it anywhere, no matter how many people
are around they can get to you somewhere. (Level 2
witness)
You are always on the look out. I can spot a stranger’s
car at my son’s school. We take him to school, we put
him in, and we get him back. My daughter’s never
allowed to get on a bus. She is picked up from
wherever she is going and dropped off wherever she is
going ... We still live our lives. (Level 1 witness)
For other witnesses, however, these tactics and
strategies were perceived to be insufficient to
ensure their safety. For these witnesses, intimi-
dation had a far more radical impact on their use of
space by prompting a permanent move away from
their home area.
The decision to flee
Witnesses’ reflections on their decision to flee
reveal that an understanding of forced migration,
like migration more generally, benefits from
what Halfacree and Boyle (1993) have termed a
’biographical sensitivity’, with its emphasis on
multiple reasons for moving and the actions of
contextualized individuals. Take, for example, the
comments by these two witnesses:
because I was one of the boys, one of that guy‘s mates,
my life would have been hell, absolutely hell. I would
not have been able to show my face in the area. I knew
I had to move away. There was no two ways about it.
(Level 1 witness)
1am a grass now, you know what I mean, and that is it.
I will never be able to stay there again - I have lived
there all my life -because of those scummy pigs. (Level
1 witness)
For these witnesses, the decision to flee reflected
not just the seriousness of the threat to their lives
but also their perceived identity as a grass, brought
about by their transgression of community norms.
In other words, their feelings of exclusion and the
decision to leave their homes were bound up with
witnesses’ embeddedness in particular cultural
environments. For other witnesses, however, it was
their identity as parents and the fact that their
home was no longer a place of safety for their
children which appeared crucial to their decision to
move:
Witness intimidation, forced migration and resettlement
I really did not want to move. If it had not been for my
kids I would not have moved. I only moved because of
what he might do. Maybe petrol bomb the house and
they might be in it or something. I think it was them
that made me move, the kids, because once he had run
me down I thought, ’Right, out’. (Level 1 witness)
At first I was determined that no one was frightening
me out of my house and the area I was living in. I said
no way, they are not frightening me out of this house,
no way. I am coming back to this house. But when the
threat came for the kids [information that they would
be shot] ... we had to think about them as well so that
is when we decided to go under witness protection.
(Level 1 witness)
Of course, as this last quotation indicates, the
possibility of assistance from the Strathclyde Police
Witness Protection Programme is another impor-
tant element in the decision to move. However, for
many witnesses, Programme assistance appeared
to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition
for relocation. One the one hand, five witnesses
interviewed had not been offered assistance by
the Programme but still decided to move
home because of what they perceived to be the
seriousness of the threat against them:
Myself and my husband, we just decided one night,
right, pack everything, we are off. We packed every-
thing that night and we just set off in a taxi next
morning. We let them think we were going on holiday
with suitcases. (Level 2 witness)
On the other hand, the demands of Programme
assistance (in terms of severing contacts with their
home area) were perceived by several witnesses as
too great, and they therefore refused the offer of
relocation, typically opting to move away tem-
porarily to stay with relatives before then returning
home. Despite the seriousness of the threats
against them, these witnesses emphasized the com-
plex web of social and economic ties rooted in their
home area, which they were not prepared to break;
therefore, sometimes reluctantly, they decided to
stay:
They suggested to us that they would move us out of
the way altogether, cut ties with our family. We did not
want to go the whole hog. I couldn’t do it. I have a
business to run. (Level 1 witness)
I have to stay here, but would rather move ... My
mother needs assistance and my sister has a disabled
daughter in a wheelchair. We take her for a rest now
and again to give her a rest. I couldn’t go away
85
and leave them. I would not think about it. (Level 1
witness)
Life in temporary accommodation
Of the 18 witnesses who moved home perma-
nently, the overwhelming majority went into tem-
porary accommodation first in order to remove
them from the danger area quickly. In some cases
this meant staying with relatives, but for those
witnesses assisted by the Programme it was nor-
mally bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation or
temporary housing provided by local authority
homeless units. As places of physical safety, such
temporary accommodation has parallels with the
reception camps described in refugee research (see
Monzel 1993) or the refuges available to women
fleeing violence in their homes (see Binney ef ai
1985; Dobash and Dobash 1992). Indeed, some of
the reactions to reception camps or refuges
described in these studies clearly have parallels
with the experiences of witnesses. There is, for
example, a profound sense of relief at being in
a place where fears for physical safety are
significantly reduced:
I did feel safer, aye, it was a lot safer because I knew
that, fair enough, he could get somebody to find us but
then people have to find us first before they can do
anything. (Level 1 witness)
Unlike refugees in reception camps or women in
refuges, however, witnesses have no contact with
those in similar circumstances. Moreover, any
alleviation of their fear of immediate threat was
tempered by an acute sense of anxiety about their
new circumstances. Anxiety, as Giddens (1991)
explains, has to be distinguished from fear.
Whereas fear is a response to a specific threat,
anxiety is a more generalized state of emotions,
often tied to feelings of ontological insecurity.
Many of the witnesses living in temporary accom-
modation continued to experience such chronic
ontological insecurity. The difficulties of coping
with social interaction, for example, were felt both
in the private spaces of B&B accommodation
where witnesses were inevitably mixing with
strangers, as well as in surrounding public spaces
such as the street:
There were too many people coming and going and
you are worried about your safety. It makes you worry
more. I did not feel safe there at all. (Level 1 witness)
86
I still kept taking panic attacks all the time. 1 was not
really on top of things. I could not really go out of the
house on my own. I was scared if I was walking along
the road and if I heard a car pulling up behind me I
would just freeze. (Level 2 witness)
Even when witnesses were staying temporarily
within the more familiar environment of, for
example, a relative’s home, their sense of a lack of
control over social interaction and the disruption
to their normal time-space routines prompted
feelings not just of anxiety but also of anger:
It actually made me feel more angry. I had to move out
of my house and sleep at my mum’s ... I was there for
six months sleeping on the floor in a room with my two
younger brothers ... I thought, ’No, this isn’t happening
to me’. You lose your self-esteem. I just felt manky
sleeping on a floor; you just lose everything. I was
fighting with my mum all the time because we were
getting on each others backs all the time. It was murder.
(Level 1 witness)
In one case, these feelings of anxiety and anger
associated with the disruption of routine and the
sense of powerlessness and dependence took a
more intense form as a result of a witness having to
live an itinerant existence, moving every couple of
weeks. Eventually, the mental strain of these
experiences began to overwhelm the witness, who,
risking his personal safety, sought emotional
refuge by returning to his former home:
I was in one place before the trial and then after that I
moved every second week. I had no say in where I was
going. I was never settled. I was living out of suitcases.
I landed up moving back home .._It was a case of going
back and taking my chances or losing my family and
my mind. (Level 1 witness)
Resettlement
Such action was exceptional. Most witnesses were
moved from their temporary accommodation to a
new property somewhere well away from their
home area. While the reasons behind witnesses’
choice of area could not be addressed in interviews
for security reasons, it was clearly a difficult
decision, as this witness recalls:
If you have spent all your time in the one place and
then you have to move and they’re asking you, ‘Right,
where do you want to go?’, it‘s not a question you can
answer off the top of your head. You have to give it a lot
of thought. (Level 1 witness)
Nicholas R Fyfe and Heather McKny
In terms of the type of property they were offered,
witnesses had little influence. To counter claims in
court that witnesses may have benefited materially
from relocation - and thus their evidence was
tainted - a strict like-for-like policy was operated
in relation to new accommodation. In practice,
many witnesses felt that, far from their new home
being an improvement on their old one, they were
left with much work to do to raise it to a similar
standard. More generally, however, resettlement in
a new area meant that they were now safely away
from the danger area and that the threat to their
lives was therefore significantly reduced. Given the
life-threatening intimidation to which many had
been subject, there is an almost palpable sense of
relief at having found a safe place to live:
I would not be here now. That is just the way they [the
intimidators] are. I know the people. (Level 1 witness)
We all owe our lives to this [relocation] ... I think we
could have ended up dead. Someone would have
ended up dead. Someone was going to get killed and I
did not want it to be me or my family. (Level 1 witness)
Appearing in court
Once resettled, however, all the witnesses still
faced the prospect of having to return to their
former home area to give evidence. As previous
research has highlighted, the spaces of the court
building and the courtroom are significant areas in
which intimidation can take place (see Maynard
1994; Rock 1991). While this is of concern for any
witness, for those who have already experienced
intimidation in the period preceding the trial,
anxieties about encountering supporters of the
accused will be even greater. For witnesses
relocated by the Programme, however, measures
were taken to minimize the possibility of further
intimidation within the court building. Police
officers took witnesses to and from the court on the
days of the trial and used private rather than
public entrances to the building. Moreover, in
contrast to many witnesses, who are ’obliged to
wait in crowded, inhospitable areas’ (Zedner 1997,
601), the witnesses were provided with separate,
secure waiting rooms.
Once in the witness box, however, the witnesses
were vulnerable to verbal and non-verbal threats
from the public gallery and the dock
Every time you happened to look down someone put
their finger across their throat. It was out of order.
(Level 1 witness)
Wztnesb intimidation, forced migration and resettlement
The intimidation at court was horrendous. The witness
box is far too close to the dock. All his cronies were
there when I walked into the witness box. That did
intimidate me. He was shouting at me when I was
giving my evidence. (Level 1 witness)
In most of the cases in which the witnesses were
involved, the defendants were found guilty and
given long prison sentences. Although this was
clearly a source of relief, it was often tempered by
a fear that those convicted would still try to seek
out the witness when released:
I feel safe now because the guy is in the jail but what
happens when he gets out? If the door goes at night
you are jumping to the window thinking who is that?
(Level 1 witness)
The fear has got less, [but] it is always in the back of
your mind ... What worries me is what will happen
when he gets out. Knowing him and the way he looked
at me in court and the way I looked at him, he is going
to come after me one day. (Level 1 witness)
Space and selfidentity
For all the witnesses, the trial marked a watershed.
Before it they thought of little else, but once it was
over they and their families begin to focus much
more on the difficulties of building a new life away
from their home area. For most witnesses, the
greatest challenge posed by resettlement was to
their sense of self-identity. While some types of
relocated witness, such as women fleeing domestic
violence, may choose to exercise caution in reveal-
ing information about their past lives because of
fears of being found by a former partner, the
interviewees’ future safety required a far more
extreme and potentially destabilizing break with
their past. Because of concerns over their intimi-
dators’ determination to find them, relocated
witnesses’ ’overriding goal is to conceal their past
lives, to pretend not to have been who in fact they
were, and to pretend to be in fact who they know
they are not’ (Montanino 1984, 506). As witnesses
interviewed explained:
1 said to myself I was not going to tell anybody
anything; before you knew it, it would be right round
the town. (Level 1 witness)
N o one knows who we are and we did not let anyone
know what we were there for. It was like a fresh start
for us. (Level 1 witness)
These observations are of enormous theoretical as
well as practical significance. As Giddens (1991)
87
argues, crucial to sustaining a stable sense of self-
identity is a feeling of biographical continuity. US
studies of witness relocation indicate, however,
that such a sense of biographical continuity is
dislocated and chronically undermined by the
circumstances of relocation. Witnesses
find themselves in a position where their past social
identities are obliterated as completely as possible.
Their personal past biographies cannot be shared with
others. They face a future of social relations with others
that is dominated by concealment concerning who they
have been and pretence as to who they are. (Montanino
1984,503)
Moreover, it is clear from the interviewees that this
disruption to their sense of biographical continuity
has a strong spatial as well as social dimension. As
one witness put it, ’I have just basically had to
leave my life behind’ (Level 1 witness), while
others reflected on how their sense of self-identity
was grounded in their personal geographies based
on their home area:
I did not even know about the area until I moved. My
whole life was back there, everything, where I grew up,
where I went drinking, the weans, everything, and I
still suffer through it. (Level 1 witness)
My view on the whole situation is that I have not done
anything wrong. I have still not done anything wrong
and I can’t even get to see my family. That tears me to
pieces. I have nephews growing up that I don’t get to
see. My whole family is back there. Sometimes I think I
will pop back and see my family but I can’t. It is like I
saw something that I should not have seen and it ruins
your life because you stand up and say what you said.
It is absolutely terrible. (Level 1 witness)
In addition to biographical continuity, a stable
sense of self-identity also depends on what
Giddens refers to as a ‘protective cocoon’ (Giddens
1991,40)of basic trust by which individuals screen
out the risks and dangers associated with everyday
action and interaction. For many relocated
witnesses, however, this protective cocoon has
been ripped apart by intimidation and they
become ’obsessively preoccupied with apprehen-
sion of possible risks to [their] existence’ (Giddens
1991, 53). Even when resettled away from the
danger area, seemingly mundane events, such as
seeing a car from their former home area or just
people outside their house, are routinely inter-
preted by witnesses as possible signs of danger:
I still take anything serious. I am more alert; I sleep
with one eye open. It is probably just me. See if I see a
88
car or a van from my old home area doing deliveries, I
will go away or go round about it rather than drive by
it. (Level 1 witness)
I am paranoid and anxious even now. I will see people
outside and I will say to her and she will say ‘Look, you
did not bother before the kicking, why bother now?’
Hopefully I will not be like that for the rest of my life.
(Level 1 witness)
Furthermore, relocated witnesses appear to be
largely unable to observe that ’civil indifference’
towards strangers on the street that is crucial to the
social management of anxiety in public spaces:
I am scared to go out, so I am. If I do I am always
looking behind me and that, so I am. It feels as though
everyone is looking at me. I am terrified and that when
I am walking about myself. (Level 2 witness)
For many of the witnesses interviewed (and as is
also revealed by research in the US: see Koedam
1993), the combination of this disruption to their
sense of biographical continuity and the flooding
in of anxiety were the cause of considerable mental
distress:
It has totally disrupted my life. I am extremely
unhappy. I waken up every morning and say, ’What am
I doing here? (Level 2 witness)
I am still very angry. I have never been as angry as this
in my life; I am still very, very angry ... I just cannot get
rid of the anger. If I met them I think I would kill them,
that is how angry I feel. It is the result of everything. It
is the result of what they did to my daughter; having to
leave my home that 1 have been in for nearly 27 years
and having to leave the area and my sisters. I don’t
know if I am ever going to get over this anger. (Level 1
witness)
Faced with these destabilizing influences on their
sense of self-identity, one source of strength for
these witnesses is what Giddens (1991,54) refers to
as a sense of ’self-regard and integrity’. For several
witnesses, this was reflected in their belief that,
despite all the suffering and anguish they had
experienced, their decision to give evidence was
the right one:
If you don’t stand up against these people they will
continue to carry on and they will do it to more and
more people. You have to stand up and say, ‘No, you
are not getting away with this’. (Level 1 witness)
Nicholas R Fyfe and Heather McKay
Conclusions
Among the ’challenges’ facing population geogra-
phy are the need to engage with issues that emerge
from the ‘contemporary social context’ (Findlay
and Graham 1991, 158) and to draw more heavily
on qualitative methods in order to understand the
’migration experience’ (Ogden 1998, 114). This
paper has attempted to address both these
challenges. Drawing on in-depth interviews with
witnesses, it has provided some vivid insights
into both the growing problem of serious intimi-
dation and the experiences associated with forced
migration and resettlement. The accounts of wit-
nesses reveal the power of intimidation to destroy
any sense of the home as a safe, controllable
space, as well as the exclusionary significance
of neighbourhood-based hostility towards those
identified as ’grasses’. These accounts also reveal
how the particular circumstancesof movement and
resettlement associated with witness relocation put
enormous pressure on witnesses’ social well-being.
Much as Valentine’s (1998) experience of harass-
ment highlighted the significance of her personal
geography to her sense of ontological security, so
too the dislocation of witnesses’ personal geogra-
phies caused by intimidation and relocation is
crucial to understanding their concerns about
ontological security and self-identity. Indeed, these
vitally important yet taken-for-granted features of
everyday social life are revealed not only as rela-
tively fragile constructions, but ones that critically
depend on control over space and spatial relations.
This is not just of theoretical interest but of practi-
cal and personal importance. As a small yet grow-
ing number of witnesses are ’plucked from the
communities in which they reside and secretly
relocated great distances to other communities
where they can, for a substantial period of time,
remain social strangers’ (Montanino 1984,503),one
of the urgent challenges for criminal justice policy-
makers is to address not just the physical safety of
witnesses provided with this type of protection but
also their immediate and longer-term social well-
being. Witness relocation, like forced migration
more generally, is about more than simply the
movement of people away from danger areas into
temporary accommodation and on to places of
safety. It is, as this study graphically illustrates, a
profoundly disorienting and destabilizing personal
experience, which leaves a legacy of people trying
to come to terms with their displaced lives.
Witriesh intimidation, forced migration and resettlement
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Scottish Executive for
funding this project, but the views expressed in the
article are those of the authors. We would also like
to thank all those who helped with the research,
in particular the witnesses who were willing to
be interviewed about extremely difficult circum-
stances. Previous versions of this paper were pre-
sented to seminars a t Aberystwyth, Dundee and
Strathclyde Universities and we are grateful for
the comments of participants. Finally, Ron Martin
and the three anonymous referees provided very
helpful comments.
Notes
Only one other study of relocated witnesses has been
undertaken (Montanino 1984): this involved the use
of a self-administered questionnaire to 24 WITSEC
clients. Given concerns that the witnesses’ circum-
stances precluded ’any form of safe, direct, face-to-
face contact’, the questionnaires were distributed and
collected by intermediaries from the US Marshals
Service (Montanino 1984,511).
In the case of relocated witnesses, the interviews were
held at venues in Glasgow with police officers escort-
ing witnesses to and from the interview; for most of
the other witnesses, interviews took place in their
homes.
Before undertaking the interviews, we were con-
cerned that witnesses might not trust us to preserve
their anonymity in relation to the police officers who
had facilitated our access to them. The fact that all
witnesses agreed to the tape recording of interviews,
and many were openly critical of some police officers
and the criminal justice system more generally,
suggested that the witnesses were prepared to talk
relatively freely about their experiences.
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