Justice for All: Putting Victims at the Heart of Criminal Justice?

This article considers the claim in the government's White Paper, Justice for All , to put victims and witnesses at the heart of the criminal justice system and argues that there is an unresolved tension within the paper between instrumentalist crime control concerns and intrinsic concerns for the rights of victims and witnesses. It is argued that many of the proposals now contained in the latest Criminal Justice Bill are so preoccupied with rebalancing the system away from offenders that they risk doing injustice to defendants with little tangible benefit to victims and witnesses in terms of rights and remedies.     

Editor's Note

European Journal of Political Research -     

Perceived helpfulness and use of professional services by abused women

Many abused women use professional and community services and begin to talk to professionals about the abuse they have endured. This article presents and discusses results of a study of 270 abused women who used the services of professionals and service agencies. The article presents information on the frequency of contact and the perceived helpfulness of different professions. Also presented are the types of responses which were considered to be useful and ineffective. This study revealed that the most frequently contacted professions were not necessarily perceived to be the most helpful. Further, certain responses of the service providers were more frequently reported to have value.     

Convicting and incarcerating felony offenders of intimate assault and the odds of new assault charges

The effectiveness of harsher sanctions for domestic violence offenders is an important topic given legislative trends in “getting tough” with these offenders. This article takes a rare look at felony domestic violence, specifically felony assaults on female intimates, with an analysis of whether conviction, jail, and imprisonment are related to the odds of subsequent charges among 353 male defendants from twenty-four Ohio trial courts of general jurisdiction. Each defendant was followed up for two years after his original case was closed and his sentence (if any) was served. Conviction and jail sentences were both related to significantly lower likelihoods of recharging for intimate assault, but prison sentences were not related to these odds. These findings are discussed in relation to the potential importance of reducing short-term opportunities for violence in order to prevent future harm.