Justice For Victims Research Articles

Older victims of crime: Vulnerability, resilience and access to procedural justice

This article provides the first comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of unequal access to procedural justice for older victims of crime. It analyses quantitative and qualitative data exploring the interactions of older people with the criminal justice system of Northern Ireland. It identifies that older victims of crime are less likely to have a successful crime outcome (known as ‘detection’ or ‘clear-up’ in other jurisdictions) to their case when compared to other adults. The results provide evidence of a system failing to adequately take into account additional vulnerabilities that disproportionately impact on older victims’ ability to engage with the justice process. There is an analysis of the relationships between vulnerability, resilience and access to justice. The current conceptual understanding of vulnerability as applied to older people within the justice system is challenged. The findings are relevant for researchers and policy-makers in the United Kingdom, Ireland and further afield concerned with the treatment of older and vulnerable victims by the justice system.

Sexual boundary violations: victims, perpetrators and risk reduction

SUMMARYSexual boundary violations by healthcare professionals is a subject that has largely been ignored in the UK. There has been little research into the field. It is rarely taught on professional training courses and practitioners appear to know very little about it. The history of sexual boundary violations is littered with failures to notice, failures to report and inadequate justice for victims and perpetrators alike. Perpetrators are commonly assumed to be predators. Given the many widely reported recent events in our media of both predatory and other sexual offenders, we believe it is timely for all healthcare and other professions working with vulnerable people to take the problem seriously, to provide appropriate services for victims, evaluation and assessment of perpetrators, and sanctions that fit the crime in order to regain public trust.LEARNING OBJECTIVES•Develop greater understanding of the problem of sexual boundary violations by professionals•Be able to manage the care of a patient who has been the victim of a sexual boundary violation•Understand factors in professionals that may lead to a sexual boundary violationDECLARATION OF INTERESTNone.

The Emerging Right to Justice in International Criminal Law: A Case Study of Colombia

This paper explores the nature of cross-fertilization between international criminal law and human rights law. It is argued that international criminal justice does not only ‘borrow’ from the discipline of human rights law when defining substance and procedure but also generates its own unique set of rights and obligations. They stem from the variety of objectives pursued by international criminal law, including retribution, deterrence, reconciliation, setting the historical record and justice for victims. Different goals produce different societal and individual expectations, which are collectively captured by the emerging sui generis right to justice widely promoted by international criminal law. The paper uses for its analysis the case study of Colombia – a country under the preliminary examination of the International Criminal Court since 2004 and currently implementing the peace deal aimed at ending protracted civil war in the country. This case illustrates how international criminal law values enshrined in the Rome Statute trickle down to the specific situation and merge with the goals of transitional justice and the logic of human rights.

English

The International Criminal Court (ICC) established in 2002 under the Rome Statute with significant support from African States, which comprise thirty percent of the ICC’s total membership. After nearly two decades in operation, the ICC has issued a number of indictments to both sitting and ex-African leaders. The African Union has criticized these indictments citing that the court seems to be overly concentrating its efforts on the African continent. African leaders have claimed that the ICC had ignored the atrocities committed by western superpowers especially in the various wars on terror around the world. Another notable concern is the absence of these major powers from the membership of the Rome Statute. In response for example, several African states including Chad, Uganda, South Africa and Malawi have defied the ICC’s requests to arrest and extradite Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir for prosecution. The latest of such defiance was Rwanda’s refusal to arrest al-Bashir when he visited the country in March 2018. This article traced the origin of African dissent against the ICC and examined its implications on justice for victims, international law, as well as the future of the court. This article examined some of the most prominent ICC investigations of African Heads of State and the criticisms against such action for example, state sovereignty and immunity of Heads of State. The article also analyzed the role of the ICC in creating accountability for atrocities in Africa. It concluded that although the ICC has its deficiencies, it remains a very important avenue for ensuring accountability and justice for serious crimes in Africa. This exercise was achieved by extensive review and analysis of international law instruments, national legislation, textbooks, academic articles as well as reports pertaining to the formation and operation of the ICC. Key words: International Criminal Court (ICC), African Union, accountability, human rights, crimes against humanity.

Some Random Thoughts about Victimological Movement in the World with Special Reference to India

Historically, priority of the criminal justice system was always to establish the guilt of the accused and provide a punishment to the offender. Even after the advent of scientific criminology, focus was on all aspects of the offender, to the complete neglect of the victim. Victim was always treated as a witness, and victim justice has been a struggle throughout the world. Many scholars and criminal justice administrators recommended urgent measures to improve the conditions of victims, particularly after the historic Report of President’s Task Force in 1982 in the USA. Since then a victimological movement emerged which culminated in the creation of UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power, 1985. In this article, the emergence of victimological movement, its impact and the subsequent developments in India are discussed.

Police Evaluations of Intimate Partner Violence in Heterosexual and Same-Sex Relationships: Do Experience and Training Play a Role?

In recent years, law enforcement agencies have enhanced intimate partner violence (IPV) policies and increased the frequency of required training. Yet, there is limited research that addresses how experience and training are related to evaluations of heterosexual and same-sex disputants in an IPV incident. This research investigates how officers perceive heterosexual and same-sex disputants in IPV incidents and examines how officer experience, frequency, and recency of required IPV training affect evaluations. Law enforcement officers (n = 309) across 27 states responded to a hypothetical scenario of an IPV incident between a heterosexual or same-sex couple. Dependent variables included perpetrator and victim arrest, perceived fairness of non-arrest options, willingness to provide referrals for perpetrator and victim, and severity of victim injury. Officers believed that the use of some non-arrest options was fairer when the perpetrator was a gay male or heterosexual female and there were no significant effects for arrest options. Referrals to a domestic violence hotline and injury severity varied by perpetrator and victim gender and sexual orientation. While officer experience played a role in non-arrest options, frequency and recency of officer training were not related to dependent variables of interest. Officers embrace evaluations of IPV that demonstrate differential evaluations of the incident as a result of gender and sexual orientation. These evaluations may have implications for the legitimacy of claims and safety and justice for victims and officers.

Justice for victims of sexual abuse and harassment: lessons for Westminster?

This policy paper is a comment piece on recent sexual harassment and abuse scandals in the British Parliament, which also references new UK research on justice and gender-based violence. The author draws on six years working for the British Parliament as a clerk (parliamentary civil servant) to reflect on why the parliamentary culture and management has long ignored sexual harassment, abuse and bullying, often moving victims on rather than challenging (alleged) perpetrators. The paper presents current research being conducted by the universities of Bristol, Cardiff and UWE and national charity Women’s Aid, which is asking ‘What does justice mean to victims of gender-based violence?’ Using emerging findings from interviews with over 250 victims/survivors of gender-based abuse, the paper draws lessons for how the House of Commons authorities should respond to sexual harassment and abuse within Parliament. Vital in any victim-centred response are some key principles. Victims/survivors must: be listened to and taken seriously, be empowered to make their own choices about what happens next, be given a range of options including formal sanctions as well as less formal routes, potentially including specialist ‘transformational mediation’ and, most crucially, all be given access to specialist advocates trained in sexual harassment and abuse.

Is bad intent negligible? Linking victim justice sensitivity, hostile attribution bias, and aggression.

The hostile attribution bias (HAB) is a well-established risk factor for aggression. It is considered part of the suspicious mindset that may cause highly victim-justice sensitive individuals to behave uncooperatively. Thus, links of victim justice sensitivity (JS) with negative behavior, such as aggression, may be better explained by HAB. The present study tested this hypothesis in N = 279 German adolescents who rated their JS, HAB, and physical, relational, verbal, reactive, and proactive aggression. Victim JS predicted physical, relational, verbal, reactive, and proactive aggression when HAB was controlled. HAB only predicted physical and proactive aggression. There were no moderator effects. Injustice seems an important reason for aggression irrespective of whether or not it is intentionally caused, particularly among those high in victim JS. Thus, victim JS should be considered as a potential important risk factor for aggression and receive more attention by research on aggression and preventive efforts.

A Dual‐Process Approach to Criminal Law: Victims and the Clinical Model of Responsibility without Blame

The dominant orientation in both mainstream and alternative forms of criminal justice theory and practice employs a single process approach: one that aims to do justice to victims primarily through conviction and punishment of the offender. In other words, justice for victims crucially involves offenders getting their ‘just deserts’. In contrast, this paper argues for a dual process approach: one that separates conceptually and, in so far as possible, in practice, the victim and the offender, and employs two distinct systems to serve the ends relevant to each respectively. We suggest that neither in principle nor in practice can a single process do justice to both victims and offenders. Rather, we set out principles for designing one track oriented to victims and another to offenders, to address the distinctive concerns of each in relation to criminal law with parallel sophistication and humanity.

Juror Decision Making in Acquaintance and Marital Rape: The Influence of Clothing, Alcohol, and Preexisting Stereotypical Attitudes.

Stereotypical biases about women's roles in intimate relationships including their marital status and lifestyle choices such as clothing and alcohol use influence juror attributions of rape case defendant guilt, potentially reducing access to justice for victims. Across two mock-juror decision-making experiments, participants read identical fictitious sexual assault vignettes varying in intoxicated defendant-complainant relationship (married vs. acquaintance), accompanied by photographs of complainant clothing at the crime (body revealing vs. plain) and in court (smart vs. casual). Experiment 2 additionally described the defendant's alcohol consumption as either under or over the drink drive limit. Most participants delivered guilty verdicts (Experiment 1: 86.7%; Experiment 2: 75.5%), recommending mean prison sentences of 5.04 years in Experiment 1 (n = 218 students) and 4.33 years in Experiment 2 (n = 1,086 members of public). In Experiment 1, guilty verdict rates and sentences were significantly higher when the married-but not the acquaintance-complainant dressed smartly rather than casually in court. In Experiment 2, significantly more guilty verdicts were delivered by females (80.3%) than males (66.9%), while sentence lengths were longer in acquaintance (M = 4.52 years) than married conditions (M = 4.10). Significant interactions between defendant alcohol use and clothing choice of the married-but not the acquaintance complainant-at the crime also influenced sentencing decisions. Higher scores on additionally administered scales measuring rape myth acceptance and sexist attitudes, but not alcohol expectancies, predicted lenient sentencing decisions in both experiments. These findings highlight how "rape myths" concerning marriages drive juror decisions. Prosecuting lawyers should use these results to better challenge these attitudes in court. Internationally, rape is often unreported to the police, and married victims may be more willing to come forward if they believe unbiased access to justice is likely.

A Book Review of Ground and Limit of Victim as a Part in Action: Research on Victim’s Right of Action in Public Prosecution

Under the frame of the principle of state prosecution, the crime is deemed to be a kind of illegal act provided with social harmfulness and so the state is maintained the only victim of crime. The victim’s right of prosecuting autocephaly the crime is deprived in the case of public prosecution, and the state prosecution agency replaces the victim to be the public power of seeking the justice of criminal law. Compare brilliantly with the problem of the accused’s right protection highly praised by the jurists in the past, more and more jurists begin to pay close attention to the victims’ problem of their procedural right. Among the researching of the victim’s problems, the most challenging one is the victim’s status in the criminal proceedings. The book The Ground and Limit of the Victim as a Part in Action: Research on the Victim’s Right of Action in Public Prosecution written by HAN Liu leads the theory of the right of action into the problem of the victim’s status in litigation, demonstrates the independence of the victim’s right of action relative to the right of prosecution. The book discusses the basic principle of the victim’s right of action and the research belongs to typical research of speculative and philosophic theory. Based on normative quotation, clearheaded logic and fluent reasoning, the whole book forms a complete system. And being an outstanding example of discussing justice for victim, the book provides a novel and original theory to explain and solve the problem of the victim’s status of the part in criminal prosecution procedure.

Financially-constrained lawyers: An economic theory of legal disputes

Financial constraints reduce the lawyer's ability to file lawsuits and bring cases to trial. As a result, access to justice for victims, pretrial bargaining, and potential injurers' precaution might be affected. We study civil litigation using a model that allows for asymmetric information, financially-constrained lawyers, third-party lawyer lending, and a continuum of plaintiff's types. We contribute to the economic analysis of law by generalizing seminal models of litigation (Bebchuk, 1984, 1988; Katz, 1990), offering the first formal definition of access to justice, and presenting comprehensive social welfare analysis of relevant public policy. We provide complete equilibrium characterization and identify necessary conditions for the existence of the mixed- and pure-strategy PBE. Access to justice is denied to some victims under the mixed-strategy equilibrium. We then study the social welfare effects of policies aimed at relaxing lawyers' financial constraints, and identify a necessary and sufficient condition for a welfare-enhancing effect.

Radically seeking social justice for children and survivors of abuse

This article explores the contribution of Liz Davies to the radical social work tradition in the UK. We describe two key aspects of Davies’s activism: her early mental health activism, supporting foundational organisations like the Mental Patients Union; and her child protection activism, promoting children’s rights and obtaining justice for victims and survivors of child abuse. We explore three critical debates specifically arising from her most sustained child protection work: debates about prevention and/or protection; the accusation of child abuse activism as moral panic; and the idea of the ‘heroic’ social work activist.

Examining the legal safeguards against the environmental impact of land grabbing in African countries

Large-scale land acquisitions in African countries by foreign investors who use such lands for agricultural purposes that have negative socio-economic and environmental impact in host countries is considered as ‘land grabbing in Africa’. In the context of the environment, the type of crops and monoculture practices undertaken by the foreign investors led to changes in land use, deforestation, exposure of land to soil erosion, depletion of water sources, pollution of surface water and contamination of ground water as a result of the intense use of agro-chemicals. Collectively, these have had a deleterious environmental impact in host countries. This article examines the phenomenon of ‘land grabbing in Africa’ by identifying the type of land-based agricultural investments by foreign entities and the environmental impact of such investments in African countries like Nigeria. The article argues that the prevailing Nigerian environmental law cannot ensure sustainable development as it does not address the environmental impact of land-based agricultural investments by foreign enterprises in the country. The article proposes that suitable environmental laws must contain the concepts of Community Participation in environmental impact assessment process of land based foreign investments and Environmental Justice for victims of environmental degradation of such investments.

Righting a wrong: Retaliation on a voodoo doll symbolizing an abusive supervisor restores justice

When a subordinate receives abusive treatment from a supervisor, a natural response is to retaliate against the supervisor. Although retaliation is dysfunctional and should be discouraged, we examine the potential functional role retaliation plays in terms of alleviating the negative consequences of abusive supervision on subordinate justice perceptions. Based on the notion that retaliation following mistreatment can restore justice for victims, we propose a model whereby retaliation following abusive supervision alleviates the negative effect of abusive supervision on subordinate justice perceptions. In two experimental studies (Study 1 and 2), whereby we manipulated abusive supervision and subordinate symbolic retaliation—in particular, harming a voodoo doll that represents the abusive supervisor—we found general support for our predictions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The experience of interactional justice for victims of ‘honour’-based violence and abuse reporting to the police in England and Wales

ABSTRACTInteractional justice is concerned with how far victims feel (i) respected by justice officials (‘interpersonal justice’) and (ii) informed about the progress of their case and the justice process overall (‘informational justice’) [Laxminarayan, M., Henrichs, J., and Pemberton, A. (2012). Procedural and interactional justice: a comparative study of victims in the Netherlands and New South Wales. European journal of criminology, 9 (3), 260–275; Laxminarayan, M. (2013). Interactional justice, coping and the legal system: needs of vulnerable victims. International review of victimology, 19 (2), 145–158]. This paper explores the experience of interactional justice for victims of ‘honour’-based violence and abuse (HBVA) who report to the police in England and Wales. HBVA refers to abuse perpetrated with reference to ideas of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 36 victims of HBVA across England. This paper documents their experience and extends the framework of interactional justice proposed by Laxminarayan et al. (2012). First, we identify intersectionality, in particular, the positions of gender, ethnicity and immigration status within the victim–officer encounter, as central to interpreting the interpersonal experiences of HBVA victims with police. Second, we find that how information is used and delivered can be as important as the content and timeliness of communication. Twenty of our sample of 36 participants were happy with the initial police response, but only 9 were happy with their reporting experience overall. We argue that focusing on HBVA victims’ interaction with justice actors could enable us to understand and improve HBVA victims’ experience of, and satisfaction with, the justice system overall.

International Criminal Justice and the Empowerment or Disempowerment of Victims

This chapter examines ways in which international criminal justice processes may empower or disempower victims in their pursuit of justice. Critical scholars often argue that international criminal tribunals de-politicize, render passive, or otherwise disempower victims as agents of justice. Concerns about the powerlessness or disempowerment of victims in international criminal justice processes are central to debates about whether international criminal justice does in fact advance ‘justice for victims.’ Based on focus group discussions and interviews with survivors of conflict and international crimes in Kenya and Uganda, I argue that neither the laudatory nor critical positions in this debate capture the very complex and variegated effects of international criminal justice processes on victims. I develop this argument in four sections. Section One explains how issues of victim empowerment and disempowerment have been addressed in literature on the field of international criminal justice (ICJ). Section Two describes my approach to research conducted with survivors of violence in Kenya and Uganda. Section Three summarizes this research and identifies key aspirations, concerns, and judgements regarding empowerment and disempowerment by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Section Four analyzes these findings and argues that international criminal justice processes do not simply empower or disempower victims. Instead, tribunals are selective about who receives victim status, they channel people’s agency in particular ways, and their impact is highly context-dependent. As a result, victim status is not simply empowering or disempowering — it enhances the agency of some people in some contexts to pursue some justice aims, but it can also pose serious risks and constraints. The concluding section sketches some implications of this framework for understanding the power of international criminal justice, and for evaluating the capacity of international criminal tribunals to advance justice for victims.

Burkinabè Dictator-Novels and the Struggle against Impunity

In December 1998 the body of the Burkinabè novelist and newspaper editor Norbert Zongo was found in his burned-out vehicle in the village of Sapouy. He had become a victim of the impunity of the dictatorial regime of Burkina Faso's president, Blaise Compaoré. Sten Hagberg contends that the killing of Norbert Zongo characterized a certain political culture and was thus perceived as the starting point for an organized and widely mobilized sociopolitical struggle against impunity (31). Strikes and riots characterized the struggle to bring justice for Zongo and other victims for whose deaths the perpetrators had been neither tried nor punished. It was time that impunity came to an end, it was argued, before any rule of law could be real (Hagberg 219). While the critical focus has rested predominantly on the sociopolitical dynamics of this struggle, this article contends that the fight against impunity also found expression in Zongo's outspoken journalism and in his fictional work, as well as that of his contemporaries. This article traces the critique of impunity in Zongo's Le Parachutage (1989) and in the later Burkinabè novels of Patrick Ilboudo and Loro Mazono. I approach these Burkinabè novels as dictator-novels and argue that while a focus on the aesthetic qualities of these texts is important, they must also be read as part of the sustained fight for accountability in contemporary Burkina Faso.

Sweep it under the rug: The stronghold of surname in the response to sexual assault in frontierland

Previous studies have found that neighborhoods with high crime and poverty, combined with low collective efficacy, create an environment that encourages cultural norms around gender-based violence. Categorized as coercive sexual environments (CSEs), such conditions are especially harmful to girls and young women. To date, all studies on CSEs have focused on urban communities. The current study sought out the presence of CS Es within rural locations. After conducting interviews with incarcerated girls and women, as well as community partners (e.g., probation officers, treatment providers, and judges), preliminary findings suggest that the same model is not sufficient when addressing gender-based crimes in non-metropolitan areas. Some rural communities actively ignore certain sexual assaults, primarily as a mechanism to protect the family name. Most of these frontierlands are devoid of high crime rates and poverty, and exert a sense of high collective efficacy; yet, the mentality of {[sweep it under the rug" appears to be a strong driving force in masking gender-based violence. Community partners report that broader cultural norms support, and even encourage, underreporting of crime, victim-blaming, and disregard of survivor support. These findings suggest that CSEs present differently in rural communities and that high collective efficacy may actually serve to undermine the community's willingness to seek justice for victims.

Literary-Legal Representations: Statelessness and the Demands of Justice in Héctor Tobar's <em>The Tattooed Soldier</em>

Scholars such as Arturo Arias, Ana Patricia Rodríguez, and Claudia Milian have brought to light the importance of the historical specificity and traumatic experience of the (largely undocumented) Guatemalan diaspora in the US in the wake of the Guatemalan civil war. These and other scholars have generally used a trauma studies framework to read Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier (1998/2000) and Central American migrant characters in Latinx literature in general. This article focuses on the novel’s deployment of human rights language and categories, particularly refugee-ness and statelessness. I argue that the novel, through the representation of refugees, homeless people, and a child soldier, critiques the narrow definition of statelessness provided by governmental bodies and instead reveals the experience of statelessness shared by migrants and other marginalized citizens. In addition, I assert that the novel critiques commonly offered modes of justice in the wake of human rights violations, a topic undertheorized in human rights and literary studies, and encourages new models of justice for victims of state violence.