ABSTRACT
Every first-year law student is told very early on of the essential difference between criminal and civil proceedings. Criminal proceedings are public in nature and the State, in the form of the Public Prosecutor, takes action on behalf of society at large against someone who has committed a crime. The aim is to satisfy the public interest in dealing with a wrong done to society. Civil proceedings are between private individuals where the party wronged seeks compensation against a particular wrong done to a particular victim. This ‘classical’ conception draws a firm line between the criminal process which focuses on a ‘generalized’ wrong done to society, whereas the civil process focuses on a ‘particularized’ wrong done to a certain individual. It follows that, in this conception, while the victim is the driving force and locus of decision-making in the pursuit of a claim in the civil process, he or she has no similar role in the criminal process. To put it brutally, the victim in the criminal process is just ‘a’ victim and it does not really matter who he or she may be. At most, the victim in the criminal process is a prosecution witness, like other witnesses.
