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Introduction:
The victim’s rights rests on a kind of social contract theory,
perhaps captured in the preamble to Louisiana’s 1985 victim’s
rights legislation:
In recognition of the civic and moral duty of victims . . . of
crime to cooperate fully and voluntarily with law enforcement and
prosecutorial agencies, and in further recognition of the
continuing importance of such citizen cooperation . . . the
legislature declares its intent . . . to ensure that all victims .
. . of crime are treated with dignity, respect, courtesy, and
sensitivity, and that the rights extended . . . to victims . . .
of crime are honored and protected by the law enforcement, (sic)
agencies, prosecutors, and judges in a manner no less vigorous
than the protection afforded the criminal defendants.
This appeal to the duty of victims reflects a belief that members
of the polity
owe
cooperation to others as part of their understanding of community
membership and that the community in turn owes them.
Under most of the legal systems of world, a victim is simply a
complainant who activated the machinery of the criminal justice
system by bringing evidence and information about illegal acts to
the attention of the authorities. If the police solved the case
and made an arrest, the victim then played an additional role as a
witness for the prosecution and helping the government to secure a
conviction. Since crime is conceptualized as an event that
threatened and offended the entire community, and was prosecuted
by the state on behalf of the People, the actual victim was
treated like just another piece of evidence, a mere exhibit to be
discarded after the trial.
The responsibility of victims is only confined to report the
incidents, cooperate fully with the investigation, and ultimately
testify as part of the state’s case in court. But the rights that
the injured parties deserved within the criminal justice process,
as it handled and resolved their cases, were not given much
consideration at all.
To address these injustices and imbalances, crime victims began to
joined together to form
consciousness-raising
groups, self-help support groups, and organizations to engage in
public education, outreach, research and lobbying. Despite their
differing priorities, victim activists are working together under
the common motto
victims’ rights.
They all consent to some of the basic critique:
1. That criminal justice personals, namely the police,
prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, probation officers, parole
boards, corrections administrators are overlooking or neglecting
the legitimate needs of crime victims until they began their
campaign;
2. That there is a prevailing tendency on the part of the public
as well as agency officials to unfairly blame victims for
facilitating or even provoking crimes;
3. That explicit standards of fair treatment is required to
protect the interests of complainants and prosecution witnesses,
as well as injured parties whose cases were not solved;
4. That people who suffered injuries and losses inflicted by
criminals ought to receive reimbursement from one source or
another; and
5. That the best way to make sure that victim could pursue their
personal goals and protect their own best interests is by granting
them formal rights within the criminal justice system.
The Crux Of The Problem: The Victim’s Contradictory Role
Resistance to progress in the field of victims’ rights arises out
of the inherently contradictory role of victims within the
criminal justice system. The contradiction may arise at any of the
following instances:
On the one side, victims are allies of the government in the
state’s effort to suppress lawbreaking, through punishment or
compulsory treatment. But the victims are treated as junior
partners
on the same side
as the police and the prosecution, reforms intended to empower
victims might end up facilitating the government’s ability to
convict and punish those persons that officials choose to pursue
selectively. If it turns out that changes designed to strengthen
the position of victims in the criminal justice process actually
strengthen the position of law enforcement agencies and the
prosecution in the adversarial system, then this would lead to
enhancements of distrust, alarm, and opposition from individuals
and groups concerned with constitutional rights, procedural
safeguards, and due process guarantees. On the other side, victims
are independent actors in the criminal justice process. In defense
of their own best interests, they might advocate courses of action
that are rejected by a police officer, the assistant district
attorney, the judge, the warden, or the parole board. What victims
define as their own best interests in
their cases
often diverges from or directly clashes with the goals of the
state.
Demands of Victims and What actually did they Receives.
What do victims want from the criminal justice system,
retribution, rehabilitation of the offender, or restitution? There
cannot be any generalized reply to this quarry as it is much more
tilted towards the mind frame of an individual victim. Some
victims certainly want the system to help them
get even
with those offenders who made them suffer. But retaliation or
revenge can be said to be only one possible goal. Some victims
have come to the realization that they do not get much
satisfaction after knowing that a convict has been punished on
their behalf. The deprivation endured by an inmate behind bars in
no way eliminates the emotional, physical, or financial harm
endured by the victim. Victims who reach this conclusion seek to
be restored to the condition; they were in, before the crime
occurred. Restitution by the offender becomes essential for their
recovery. In this view, only through hard work and sacrifice,
perhaps as a condition of probation or parole, can the offender
make any improvement.
In addition, some victims may press for rehabilitation of the
offender. This course of action is especially likely if the victim
and the offender had a positive prior relationship may be in
capacity of lovers, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or classmates.
If the victim and the offender are going to continue to be in
contact with each other in the future, it is in the best interest
of the victim that the offender be rehabilitated.
Opposition When Victim Challenges The Functioning Of The Crime
Control System
Many a times, the victim wants his case to be pursued but the
police or prosecutors seek to drop the charges. Conversely, some
victims may want charges to be dropped but the authorities want to
press on. In some cases, the victim seeks restitution while the
government is more concerned with incarceration. Occasionally the
victim seeks the rehabilitation of the offender while the state
seeks punishment. This may give rise to a conflicting situation.
Area of Conflicts.
1. Victim’s Right to Influence Key Decisions.
Mostly, victims turn to officials for help, serve as complainants, and contribute to the government’s case by testifying, so one can
presume that there exists a kind of team spirit between the two. A closer examination will reveal that each of the component agencies
has its own vested interests, and each group of officials and professionals have their own privileges to protect. When victims
call for improvements in the way in which they are treated, they may also question the existing way of doing business, which might
be more accurately described as
disposing of
cases
rather than as
genuinely
dispensing justice.
Victims want the right to play an active role in negotiating the
terms of a guilty plea, in deciding upon an appropriate sentence
after a successful trial, and in determining the conditions of
release for a prisoner on parole. But state gives a feeling of
indifference, towards this active participation.
2. Victim’s Right and the Police
Victims have right to demand for improved service. Victimized
members of the general public are pressuring police administrators
to reorder institutional priorities, reallocate resources, and
redeploy officers. Law enforcement decision-makers find it
difficult to openly oppose these calls for greater responsiveness
by the people, to whom they are sworn to protect and serve. When
these decision-makers resist pro-victim initiatives, they argue
that their department doesn’t have the manpower or money; or that
not enough cases arise to justify such redeployments; or that the
demands are impractical or unreasonable in terms of additional
workloads.
3. Victim’s Right and the Prosecutors
The victim’s activism has challenged the prosecutors to fulfill
their claim that they run
public law
firms
that provide free and automatic representation to innocent people
harmed by the enemies of society. Victimized
clients
provoke intense resistance from
their
lawyers when they insist upon a say in the plea negotiation
process. If the victim insisted on harsher terms or mandatory
restitution, say compulsory treatment for the offender, these
options would be considered disruptive since they would undermine
the work-group’s standardization of the disposal of cases. The
root of the problem is that the victims’ demand takes at face
value, the description of adjudication as an
adversarial
process,
whereas in reality, out-of-court settlements are meant to be an
administrative routine carried out with assembly-line precision.
4. Victims’ Right to Be Informed
If victims are going to be meaningfully empowered within the
criminal justice process, officials must undertake the additional
effort to tell them all that they need to know. But generally,
officials never perceived an obligation to inform victims about
important developments in
their
cases. Now this is required to be changed to keep victims informed
of the progress of
their
cases as they wind their way through the criminal justice process.
Police departments have been pressured to
‘read victims their rights,’
perhaps not in the immediately after the crime, when they are
dazed and bleeding, but shortly thereafter, when they have
regained their composure. Victims need to know what they are
getting into when they ask that the machinery of criminal justice
be set in motion. Victims need to be advised about their potential
responsibilities and duties, for example, to attend a lineup and
identify a suspect; to testify at pre-trial hearings; and to be
subjected to cross-examination by the defense. Victims need to be
made aware of the prospects for government protection from
harassment, retaliation, and other forms of intimidation by
offenders and their cohorts. They have to be made aware of methods
of pursuing recovery of their financial losses through
court-ordered restitution by the offender, from claims filed with
state compensation programs, from private insurance coverage, and
through lawsuits in civil court.
Victims want access to a steady flow of progress reports from the
prosecution to keep them posted about major developments in their
cases. This could include information regarding the arrest of a
suspect; the granting of bail and pre-trial release; the
acceptance of a negotiated plea or the scheduling of a trial date;
the jury’s verdict and the judge’s sentence; the conditions of a
suspended sentence and the terms of probation; where the convict
is to be incarcerated; and timely notification of release, whether
due to furlough, parole, or the expiration of the sentence.
Conclusion
The struggle by victims to gain formal rights within the criminal
justice system continues on many fronts. And, as the analysis
presented above demonstrates, the obstacles that the victims
encounters come from many quarters. Resistance from the victims’
ostensible allies within the criminal justice system tends to be
low profile, and takes the form of foot-dragging, cooptation, and
objections on pragmatic grounds.
The criminologists and victimologists had discovered through their
research and evaluations that the newly-gained rights have little
impact, and that business goes on as usual. Two reactions are
possible, to all these pains of Victims. The first reaction, both
threatening and highly undesirable, could be the abandonment of
the campaign for formal rights within the system and a turn
towards a subtle endorsement of illegal, vigilante
street justice.
The second option, much more promising, could be that a growing
number of victims will redirect their attention and energies into
exploring the potential of the emerging field of informal justice.
Practiced at the neighborhood level, this alternative to formal
adjudication relies upon the principles of conflict resolution,
using the techniques of mediation to achieve the goals of victim
restitution, offender rehabilitation, mutual reconciliation, and
community harmony. It may well be that, in an era of shrinking
resources and continued constitutional limitations; this will be
the most productive avenue for the victims’ activism.
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Objectives of Criminal Justice System
Theories Of Punishment-A Socio-Legal View
Death Sentence
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Prisoners- The Castaways of Society
Criminal cartel offences in United Kingdom
Crimes and Punishments In Iranian Legal System
 The
author can be reached at :dharmveer.nlu@legalserviceindia.com
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Rights
of Victims under Criminal Justice System
