Victims and Policy-Making

A Comparative Perspective

Matthew Hall

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781843928249
• eBook ISBN: 9781136681103
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Victims of crime are now the subjects of intense policy attention and reform across most developed nations, whilst also receiving sustained attention at the highest levels of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and many other transnational organizations. Such moves have been fostered by the continued development of the international victims' movement and driven by a host of complex and interacting drivers which span jurisdictions. This volume sets out to contrast and compare the development of policies related to victims of crime and their place within the criminal justice systems in nine separate jurisdictions (the USA, the Netherlands, England and Wales, Scotland, the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa). Based on first hand interviews with those responsible for formulating such policies, as well as detailed grounded and document analysis across these jurisdictions, this book exposes the national and transnational policy networks surrounding victims of crime and, in particular, examines how the provision of victim care is becoming globalized. In so doing, it represents a rare comparative evaluation of the underlying rationales and influences which have influenced the creation of such policies and places them in their true global context.

Chapter 1

Victims on the world stage

Introduction

The nature and extent of victimization is not adequately understood across the world. Millions of people throughout the world suffer harm as a result of crime, the abuse of power, terrorism and other stark misfortunes. Their rights and needs as victims of this harm have not been adequately recognized.

(World Society of Victimology 2006: n.p.)

In this extract from its Strategic Plan, the World Society of Victimology gives voice to a concern being expressed in jurisdictions across the globe for the lack of support, services and rights afforded to many victims of crime and other misfortunes. As a response to such challenges, victims of crime have become a topic of great political interest and policy movement, for both individual jurisdictions and international organizations. Such developments become particularly significant in light of the victim’s near indivisibility in criminal justice in past decades¹ whereby, as states assumed responsibility for reacting to crime and pursuing prosecutions, the role of the crime victim in this process became further and further eroded in most jurisdictions (Spalek 2006). The apparent reversal of this trend, witnessed in many countries across all continents in recent years, raises fundamental questions concerning the common influences on policy making between states, the politicization of crime victims and the changing relationship between the state and the individual.

Examples of such developments are diverse and can be drawn from all continents. In North America, the Canadian and US governments were among the first in the world to afford victims an ostensibly significant place on the policy agenda (Rock 1986), with the US Office for Victims of Crime² celebrating its 25th anniversary in April 2009. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the world’s richest nations, however. Further south, the Central American states of Guatemala and El Salvador each have well-established programmes to address the needs of victims of domestic violence. Similarly, in South America, the Supreme Court of Argentina has established a dedicated office ‘to assist victims of domestic violence, take statements and expedite court cases’ (Argentina Ministry of Justice 2009: n.p.).³ Brazilian literature on criminal victimization is also fast developing (Paes-Machado and Nascimento 2006).

In Europe, where the UK and The Netherlands have traditionally driven much of the academic and policy discussion on crime victims, the 2001 EU Council Framework Decision on the Standing of Victims in Criminal Proceedings⁴ now requires all EU states to afford victims basic levels of services and support. The European Commission also has a growing role in funding victim assistance initiatives in Member States. Such initiatives are co-ordinated by the newly christened Victim Support Europe, an association of 23 national victim support groups⁵ representing around 21 countries. In Australia and New Zealand, restorative justice initiatives have highlighted victim issues, as well as posing fundamental questions concerning the adequacy of the adversarial system in meeting their needs (Dignan 2005). In Asia, the Japanese Basic Act on Crime Victims came into force in 2004 with the goal, as indicated in its preamble, of ‘promot[ing] the measures for Crime Victims comprehensively and systematically’. More recently, the Supreme Court of China has called for the creation of a state compensation scheme for victims of violent crime (People’s Daily 2007). Jurisdictions comprising the region of North Africa and the Middle East have been exchanging best practice in supporting child victims of violence since 2005 (National Council for Childhood and Motherhood 2005) while South Africa has recently introduced its own Victims’ Charter to afford rights to victims in the criminal process, with a significant focus on restorative justice options (South African Department of Justice and Constitutional Development 2009).

All this gives a potted and unsystematic indication of the breadth of the victim reform agenda across the globe. The underlying thesis to be presented in this volume is that such developments, while clearly grounded in the particular history and socio-political landscape of each jurisdiction, are nonetheless linked by a broader web of common political and social influences.

In an early examination of such influences, van Dijk (1983) categorizes the reforms witnessed across developed jurisdictions intended to ‘do something’ for victims into four ‘victimogogic ideologies’. The label ‘victimogogic’ distinguishes such measures from victimology’s wider goals of counting and gathering information about crime victims (see below). According to van Dijk, victimogogic measures can be based first on a ‘care ideology’, emphasizing welfare principles. Second, policies can fall under a ‘resocialization or rehabilitation’ banner, with offender-based goals. The third victimogogic ideology is the ‘retributive or criminal justice’ model, stressing ‘just desserts’. Finally, the ‘radical or anti-criminal justice’ ideology involves resolving problems without resorting to the formal criminal justice system. Van Dijk notes two broad dimensions to such victimogogic measures, which remain valid in the recent international policy context. The first is the extent to which victims’ concerns are incorporated as factors to consider within the criminal justice process. The second dimension is the extent to which victims’ interests are goals in their own right, or whether they are intended to feed back into decision making regarding offenders, system efficiency, or other criminal justice concerns. Van Dijk further notes that many of these measures are ‘action orientated’, the goal being to intermittently ‘do something’ for victims, even when such reforms are not evidence based.⁶

Examining why victims have become the subject of an extensive reform agenda in multiple jurisdictions clearly affords insight into the limits of such policies. Nevertheless, van Dijk’s construction is restricted to an examination of political ideologies. As such, he does not discuss the wider network of factors, including transnational and international influences or social issues such as race and secularization, that may lead to different policies being put into operation.

In contrast, Robert Elias (1986: 231) argues that victimogogic policies in the USA have from the beginning been used as a tool to facilitate state control: ‘victims may function to bolster state legitimacy, to gain political mileage, and to enhance social control’. The argument is that politicians use victims as political ammunition in elections, and as a means of legitimising increasingly punitive measures. Hence, Fattah (1992: xii) characterizes victimogogic measures as ‘political and judicial placebos’.

Elias and Fattah therefore look more closely at the driving forces behind such ideologies. This takes our understanding forward, but this concentration on punitiveness may distract attention from a still wider range of influences The further examination of such influences will therefore lead to a more refined understand of why political mileage can be gained through the appearance of supporting crime victims in the first place, particularly when confidence in the criminal justice system is lacking (see Garland 2001).

A more direct analysis of the influences behind victims in policy making has previously been undertaken at the national level by Paul Rock (1986) in both Canada and England and Wales (Rock 1990, 2004). In the first study, Rock highlights the complex interaction between various external influences and the social world of policy making in the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada which eventually resulted in the formation of victim initiatives. Importantly, many of these influences and pressures had very little to do with victims of crime per se:

In a sense, reparation proved to be the Trojan horse which carried victims support schemes to political prominence. Victims support schemes were to be part of the package that were approved by ministers in March 1984 as a ‘submission on reparation’, and they were to be carried piggy-back thereafter

(Rock 1990: 345–46, emphasis added).

In England and Wales, Rock (2004) characterizes domestic ‘victim’ policies as the products of a broad web of developments. For Rock, there were eight main influencing focal points to this web: the structure of the UK Home Office, the nature of policy making, the growth of the victim as a consumer of criminal justice, the development of human rights, compensation developments, developments in reparation provision, the identification of vulnerable and intimidated, witnesses, and race issues (specifically, the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence enquiry).⁷

Rock’s analyses in both jurisdictions include the role of transnational and international influences in the development of domestic policy. Nevertheless, his main concern is with national policy structures and processes: providing extremely detailed case studies in both jurisdictions. In contrast, the present volume sets out an analysis of common influences across jurisdictions which have contributed to the ‘rediscovery’ of crime victims (Pointing and Maguire 1988) in multiple criminal justice systems. Genuinely comparative research on this issue is rare. One key exception is that of Brienen and Hoegen’s (2000) analysis of victim reforms in 22 European countries. As in the present research, the authors analysed provisions for victims across European jurisdictions. The work remains a substantial achievement and required reading for any researcher interested in the development of victim initiatives internationally. Importantly, Brienen and Hoegen’s research also allows comparisons to be drawn between inquisitorial and adversarial justice systems.⁸ Nevertheless, this research was restricted to Europe, was largely descriptive of legislation and programmes and, although covering more countries than the project set out in this volume, was not focused on the policy-making process behind such measures specifically. The research is also now ten years old, and was published before the impetus towards giving victims enforceable ‘rights’ in particular had gathered pace in many jurisdictions. As such, the present volume sets out to complement and, in places, update this earlier study.

In sum, the goal of this volume is to offer a comparative analysis between countries which can help explain the emergence of victims as an international political concern and casts light on the nature of policy making on this issue. In particular, the book will demonstrate how victim policies are part of the wider politicization of law and order seen in most developed nations. As such, victims of crime are often used by policy makers to achieve other, more retributive aims (Elias 1986) as well as financial targets (see Valler and Betteley 2001). It will also be demonstrated that the influences on these policies can be placed in the context of wider social changes, such as those described by Boutellier (2000) and Garland (2001).⁹ These include secularization and a dwindling faith in the ability of criminal justice systems to control crime. In particular, it will be demonstrated that victim satisfaction is now used as a proxy measure for the success of criminal justice provisions in many jurisdictions. The research therefore seeks to test the applicability of Boutellier and Garland’s thought in jurisdictions beyond the USA and England and Wales, where much of these authors’ attention is focused. Common to all these jurisdictions is the tendency for policy makers to accept ever-widening definitions of ‘victimhood’ (and therefore ‘suffering’) through which criminal justice may be legitimized. While such developments have brought great benefits to crime victims in all the jurisdictions, it will be argued that these underlying political goals have not always led to the best package of reforms for the victims themselves, particularly for the vast majority who do not conform to ideal images of crime victims.

Introducing the research

The research project presented in this volume compares policies and reforms which relate to victims of crime across nine developed nations, with a view to drawing parallels and identifying common factors influencing their development. The main countries under review here are: Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, England and Wales, Scotland, ¹⁰ the Republic of Ireland and the USA. The research also seeks to examine the related work of key international bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union.

These countries were selected for a number of reasons. As a group, the large number of jurisdictions was necessary in order to explore the different influences on national, transnational and international policy networks, as explained later. Practically, it was necessary to choose jurisdictions in which government policy on victims was fairly mature. This ensured, first, that there was enough information, reports, and secondary literature available to undertake a meaningful analysis and, second, that relevant civil servants, practitioners and administrators in each country had built up a wealth of experience and knowledge that could be discussed in interviews. As such, most of the nine jurisdictions under review represent a key centre for victim reform on which other jurisdictions have based their own policy agendas. That said, the Republic of Ireland was chosen for inclusion principally because, when this project began in early 2008, the Irish Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform had only recently set up a dedicated Victims of Crime Office, a development far behind many other European nations. As such, there is very little in the literature on developments concerning victims of crime in the Irish criminal justice system. This afforded the opportunity to examine the development of such policies in one jurisdiction from a relatively early stage.¹¹

The chosen jurisdictions have all witnessed recent significant change in the place of victims in their criminal justice systems, coupled with the introduction of wider support mechanisms for victims of crime. One criticism which might be levied at this sample of nations is that, aside from The Netherlands, all these jurisdictions are what Cavadino and Dignan (2007) refer to as ‘neo-liberal’ states. These are characterized as nations exhibiting right-wing political orientation, a commitment to free-market principles, where imprisonment rates are relatively high and there exist extreme income differentials. As such, The Netherlands was chosen not only because it has been a major centre for victimological research and policy¹² but also because it serves as a comparator ‘conservative corporatist’ jurisdiction. Cavadino and Dignan describe such countries, in contrast to the neo-liberal states, as being characterized by a focus on rehabilitation in the penal system and in which there is a moderately generous welfare state.

These jurisdictions were also selected to represent as far as possible a divergence of historical and social perspectives from which victim reforms have been approached. Hence, Ireland and South Africa have recent histories of significant political turbulence and violent uprisings. In Canada, this chapter has already noted Rock’s (1990) contention that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Victims on the world stage
• 2. Defining Victims’
• 3. Victims and international organizations
• 4. Victims in domestic policy making: Examining the policy network
• 5. Victims’ rights: An international review
• 6. Compensation, restitution and restorative justice
• 7. Victims and policy making: A comparative perspective
• References
• Index