ABSTRACT
In the 47 years that have elapsed since Steven Schafer (1960: 8) referred to the crime victim as the Cinderella of the criminal justice system, political (and academic) interest in the plight of victims has grown beyond recognition. While it is still true that the overwhelming amount of public funding goes on the police and penal system, in Britain, and many other western societies, victims have come to be accepted as significant actors on the criminal justice stage. Thus:
The Government’s vision is of a criminal justice system in which the needs and concerns of victims and witnesses, are central. (Home Office 2005a: 2)
However, there are marked differences in the part assigned to the victim in this new criminal justice production. The balance between victims as needing to be supported by the benevolent and caring state and victims as having rights to minimal levels of service is a delicate one, varying between countries, different points of time, and different services (Mawby 2007; Mawby and Walklate 1994). Leading on from this, appreciation of the precise services that victims should be offered is also subject to negotiation. Here, discussion broadly covers four levels of service: personal support for those who have been the victims of crime, primarily at the time of the offence but possibly through the trial and subsequently; financial compensation for victims or surviving family members; information, for example about the way the police are dealing with the case, or the way the suspect/defendant/offender is being processed; and involvement in making decisions about how the perpetrator is dealt with. Similarly, ideas about the roles of different agencies, particularly the balance between the public sector and NGOs, have varied over time and between countries.
