Victims’ Access to Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives(Victims, Culture and Society)

Why have many victim-centred policy initiatives met with so little success? How have those initiatives unfolded differently in different global jurisdictions over different periods of time? This book aims to address these questions. Building on a major research project exploring victims’ access to justice over time and place, Victims' Access to Justice considers the potentialities for victims’ participation in criminal justice systems and in victim programmes both in historical and comparative context. It considers a range of topics: ways of identifying and accommodating victims’ needs and senses of justice; the impacts for criminal justice systems of seeking to accommodate these; and the ways in which adversarial criminal justice systems, in particular, may enable or inhibit victim participation. This is essential reading for all those engaged in understanding and working with victims of crime.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Victims’ Access to Justice: A (Brief) Contemporary History 1945–2015 Pamela Cox and Sandra Walklate, Section One: Mapping the Historical Continuities of Victimhood, 2. The Crown Against…: The Victim and the State in the Pursuit of Criminal Prosecution, 1840–1985 Ruth Lamont, 3. Divergent victims in the Old Bailey, 1950–1979 Heather Shore and Lucy Williams, 4. Using Crime Survey Data to Track and Measure Access to Justice: Problems and Possibilities Elisa Impara, 5. The Changing Landscape of Service Delivery for Victims of Crime in England and Wales in the Last Fifty Years Rob I. Mawby, Section Two: The Legacies of Adversarialism for Victims’ Access to Justice, 6. Gender, Sexual Violence, and Access to Justice in India Ravinder Barn and Ved Kumari, 7. 'I want Your Tears and I Want Them to be Real': Exploring the Construction of 'Ideal' and 'Non-ideal' Victims in the Independent Assessment Process for Indian Residential School Abuse Konstantin Petoukhov, 8. Analysing the Victim Review Scheme of Decisions Not to Prosecute in England and Wales and Within Comparative Jurisdictions Marie Manikis and Mary Iliadis, Section Three: Victims’ Access to Justice: Lessons from Non-adversarial Jurisdictions, 9. The Swedish Welfare Model and the Development of Social Services for Crime Victims Kerstin Svensson and Carina Gallo, 10. Victim Participatory Rights in Dutch Criminal Proceedings: A Review of Research on Their Potential Effectiveness Maarten Kunst, Joyce Schot, and Antony Pemberton, 11. The Critical Presence of Absent Victims in Criminal Policy: Fragments of Spanish Legislation Gema Varona, 12. Evolution of Victims’ Access to Criminal Justice in Brazil Thiago Pierobom de Ávila

About the Author :
Pamela Cox is Professor in Sociology at the University of Essex, UK. Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Review :
Victims’ Access to Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives provides an important and valuable contribution to our understanding of victim participation in criminal justice mechanisms across a wide range of jurisdictions with varied legal systems and political and social traditions. A key strength of this book is its comparative historical and contemporary view of the politicisation of and State responses to crime victims against a background of wars, terrorism, settler colonial violence, and gender violence. This excellent collection draws on perspectives of diverse cultural, geographical and historical contexts to analyse the different trajectories of [some] victims’ access to justice as well as the factors that inhibit victim participation. In doing so, this book opens up problems and possibilities for scrutiny and reflection, enhancing the potential for improved policy responses to victims of crime more generally. Tracey Booth, Professor in Law Health Justice, University of Technology, Sydney This instructive collection of essays explores how crime victims’ responses to the measures that different jurisdictions employ in response to their experience may vary over and through time, and according to their scope. Anyone with an interest in the impact of such measures will find much of value here. Emeritus Professor David Miers, University of Cardiff