Victims in the criminal justice system:
Between anecdotes and a hard place
Antony Pemberton and Inge Vanfraechem
I know nothing
Outline
• Victims rights in criminal justice systems across
Europe: variety and limited portability
• Victims involvement in criminal justice: witness,
compensation and participation
• The evidence base for the effects of victim
involvement in criminal justice
Victims are different
• In their experience
• And its impact
- Co-victims of homicide and victims
of property crimes
•
•
•
•
In their background
In their psychological characteristics
In their relationship with the offender
And in many other ways
Victims are different
• In their set-up
- Compensation and/ or participation
- Judicial review
- Private prosecutor
- Auxiliary prosecutor
- Victim impact statement
- Adhesion procedure
- Compensation order
• In their implementation
- Rights matter when they can be accessed in practice
• In their political, judicial and organizational
priority
Criminal justice systems are different
• Adverserial versus inquisitorial
• Organisation
- Role of different criminal justice actors
• Penal culture
- Permissive, welfare oriented
- Punitive
European Union Member States are
different
• Variety in relevant cultural features
- Gender equality
- Punishment attitudes
• Variety in relevant organizational and
administrative features
- Administrative capacity
- Influence of EU legislation
Victims rights in justice processes: and
their rational
• Witness:
- Preventing secondary victimisation
• Compensation
- Preventing secondary victimisation
- Contributing to material outcomes
- Contributing to well-being
• Participation
- Preventing secondary victimisation
- Contributing to preferred outcomes of process
- Contributing to well-being
Secondary victimisation?
•
Which outcome?
- Dissatisfaction, experience of disrespect, re-traumatisation?
- Often confused: although they are very different and often
do not co-occur
•
Largely based upon studies in the experience of victims of
sexual and domestic violence in the United States and the
United Kingdom
- The ‘Second Rape’
- Particular forms of questioning in adverserial systems
•
Lack of knowledge about the effects of different participatory modes and actors, beyond the negative effects of
intrusive questioning
Compensation?
• Which outcome?
- Satisfaction? But what does that mean?
- Material benefit? But is that its only focus?
- (Emotional) well-being? But what
- Often confused: although they are very different
and often do not co-occur
Compensation?
•
•
•
Almost complete lack of research into the effects of
compensation (Mulder, 2013)
To what extent is achieving compensation through
different participation successful?
When it is successful what benefits?
- Symbolic value of compensation
•
When it is not successful, does it lead to secondary
victimisation?
- The taboo trade-off
Participation?
• Which outcome?
- Impact on outcome?
- Satisfaction?
- (Emotional) well-being
- Often confused: although they are very different
Participation?
• Review of research into satisfaction (Laxminarayan
and colleagues, 2014): 13 eligible studies worldwide
• Solely Anglo-Saxon and Dutch studies
• Impossible to connect to particular participatory
modes
- With the possible exception of research into Victim
Impact Statements (Roberts, 2009, Lens, 2014)
• Impossible to connect satisfaction and emotional
well-being (Kunst et al, 2014)
So
• It is still unclear what the impact of victims
rights in criminal justice should be
• We only have a very small evidence base for
certain groups of victims in certain countries
• We do not know how ‘portable’ this evidence
base is to other contexts
The limits of victims rights in criminal
justice
• Victims rights instruments accompanied by high
aspirations
• No evidence for these aspirations, while high
aspirations may lead to deep disappointments
• Working on the evidence base can help us move
from unrealistic aspirations to realistic hopes
We know nothing?
More optimistic
We know what we do not know
And we know what we need to know to advance
understanding in the position of victims in
criminal justice systems