Abstract
This article examines one element of the state’s responses to crime: the provision of a taxpayer-funded compensation scheme for victims of personal and sexual violence. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012 sits within a political context that seeks to ensure that victims of crime are better served by the criminal justice system of England and Wales, the jurisdiction that is the focus of this article. The government’s fundamental policy is that this scheme exists to compensate only those victims who are ‘blameless’, either in terms of their character, criminal record, conduct at the time of the incident, or in their engagement with the criminal justice agencies. It is a policy that illuminates elements of two of the questions that the editors posed for this Special Issue of Societies. Reviewing the increased urgency in government policies concerning the treatment of victims of crime, the first section addresses the question of how, why and when victims came to shape political and criminal justice discourse and practice. The question of how, and to what end, cultural representations have shaped perceptions of victims is addressed in the second and third sections, which examine the notion of victim status and illustrate the ways in which eligible (‘ideal’) victims are perceived and their claims under this scheme are determined.
Highlights
This article examines one element of the state’s responses to crime: the provision of a taxpayer-funded compensation scheme for victims of personal and sexual violence
1960s and 1970s’ [11] (p. 24) [12] recast that relationship in a number of ways, intended to ‘make sure that the victim’s voice is heard at the heart of Government’ [13] (p. 8). This is a claim that for many critics remains unfulfilled, but which in practice presents a number of challenges to an even-handed criminal justice system [14,15]
These ideological concerns were coupled with an instrumental recognition that as gatekeepers to the criminal justice system (CJS), victims’ willingness or otherwise to engage with it by reporting crime and supporting a prosecution is likely to be influenced by their perception of the extent to which the system both recognises their injuries and reliably produces the outcomes they reasonably expect
Summary
In any analysis of the criminal justice system (CJS) of England and Wales (and of almost all other common-law Western systems), it has been a commonplace to remark on what some have described as ‘the rediscovery’ [1] (pp. 5–10), the ‘rebirth’ [2] (pp. 69–94), [3] (pp. 7–19), or the ‘re-emergence’ of the victim [4] (pp. 26–28) over the past 50 years, in contrast to their marginalised role as a third party to the criminal trial [5,6]. This is a claim that for many critics remains unfulfilled, but which in practice presents a number of challenges to an even-handed criminal justice system [14,15] These ideological concerns were coupled with an instrumental recognition that as gatekeepers to the CJS, victims’ willingness or otherwise to engage with it by reporting crime and supporting a prosecution is likely to be influenced by their perception of the extent to which the system both recognises their injuries and reliably produces the outcomes they reasonably expect. That the greater the number of persons included in (1), the higher the level of expectations under (3), and other things being equal, the fewer the persons in (3) whose expectations will be met; that the greater the number of persons included in (1), the more likely it is that our concern for one group of victims will be displaced in favour of a more clamorous or better organised group; and that the greater the number of persons included in (1), the more likely it is that the significance of the word ‘victim’ will be diluted
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