The truth and the trial: victim participation,restorative justice,and the International Criminal Court

In the field of international criminal justice, the international criminal court (ICC) has been lauded for its integration of victim participants into its legal proceedings. In particular, the ICC’s framework of victim participation has been understood to figure as a balance between retributive and restorative justice as it enables the actual voices of the victims to be heard. However, there has been little research that considers how victim participation works in practice as a form of truth-telling. In order to begin to address this gap, the integration of the ‘voices of the victims’ into the proceedings and outcome of The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is explored. The forms of harms and experiences that comprise the truth of the events under adjudication put forward by the victim participants are considered, and then how the truth-telling functions of the ICC represent these states of injury. While the ICC’s legal proceedings enable victims to speak of their harms and experiences, their ‘voices’ are largely absent from its judgment. To address this issue, the ICC needs to develop and maintain a level of ‘restorative justice coherence’ to manage victims’ expectations of its justice approaches.     

Community of care from a victim-perspective: a qualitative study

Even if there has been some theoretical debate on the role of what has been called the ‘community of care’ in restorative justice (RJ) there has not been much research on, or analysis of, the implications of the role of significant others in its practice. This lack of reflection is especially evident in the case of the victims’ community of care, despite findings that would indicate a systematic lack of participation of victim’s supporters in restorative practices. Through the qualitative analysis of 35 interviews with victims of crime who consented to attend mediation (direct and indirect), an attempt to describe and discuss the characteristics of victim’s communities of care that may become relevant for the practice of RJ is made. Results indicate that, despite a victims’ need for company or support, victims tend to disclose few details about the offense, its consequences and the mediation offered as a way to protect their loved ones or to avoid possible negative reactions from their communities. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are offered.     

Psychological effects of criminal proceedings through contact with the judge: the moderating effect of legal system structure

Psychological effects of criminal proceedings on victims have often been the focus of victimological research. The criminal justice system is repeatedly acknowledged as a source of additional harm for victims. Such a generalization, however, cannot be made to all legal systems universally to the same degree. This article compares the adversarial and inquisitorial structures of criminal justice and examines how the latter may in fact be beneficial to victim's well-being. More specifically, contact with the judge and presence at trial may be one positive form of victim participation in its most informal sense. Hierarchical regression analysis is conducted using victims of serious crimes in the Netherlands and New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to test this hypothesis. The type of legal system (i.e., inquisitorial versus adversarial) is used as a moderating variable on the relationship between contact with the judge and psychological effects. The findings indicate that victims in the Netherlands report a significant relationship, where contact with the judge is predictive of a less negative impact on psychological effects, while a non-significant relationship is found for victims in NSW.     

The Emergence of Crime Victims as a Target Group in the Swedish Social Services Act

This article examines the political motives behind the introduction of crime victim support provisions in the Swedish Social Services Act. The findings derive from a case study of the preparatory material that prefaced the legal changes that were adopted in 2001. The result shows that the explicit purpose of the provisions was to consider measures to improve the support to crime victims. To some degree the provisions can also be explained by symbolic factors. In fact, most actors in the law-making process indicate that their motives were communicative and symbolic. Support to crime victims was presumably a complicated issue for the social democratic government. Because of the economical crisis in the early 1990s, there was no scope for reforms that implied high increased costs. Yet expanding the crime victim's rights in relation to the offender, such as toughening the penal law and promoting victim impact statements, was not in line with social democratic ideology. By enacting the provisions in the Social Services Act the government demonstrated that support to crime victims was an important area of concern. At the same time, the provisions did not involve any increased costs or strengthen the crime victim's rights in relation to the offender. In this way, the provisions became a mediator that solved a difficult political dilemma for the government.     

Nature and Impact of Criminal Victimization in Barbados

ABSTRACT

This article examines the nature and impact of crime through the survey of victims who reported crimes against them to the Barbados Police Force in 1998. The study shows that the victims reported serious concern about the high level of crime in Barbados. Further, the study found that concern about crime was influenced by many factors including the type of crime, age, gender, and occupation. In addition, the findings of the study pointed to physical injuries, economic cost, and emotional impacts on the victims, even though many victims underestimated the economic cost of their victimization.     

流动人口刑事被害人及被害预防

流动人口构成犯罪被害的高危群体,因此对其进行积极有效的被害预防将对整个社会的犯罪预防和治安状况的好转起到非常重要的作用。从被害人角度看待流动人口在刑事案件中所处的角色从发,结合被害人学的相关理论和流动人口被害的实证统计,分析流动人口被害原因包括社会原因、环境原因和个人原因的基础上,这样的被害预防对策可能更有效。     

加拿大华人新移民的变迁

1980年至2001年间加拿大华人新移民,与以往的加拿大华人移民相比,呈现出明显的异质性特征。在加拿大移民史上,华人新移民的特征变迁,不仅反映了加拿大的移民政策,同时也被这些移民政策所塑造,华人新移民异质性与加拿大政府的依时性移民选择政策密切相关。另外,华人新移民的阶段性流动特征,是华人移民史上的特殊推力因素所造就的。不同的华人移民次群体之间,在社会性和人力资本方面具有多样性差异,不同的华人新移民群体的阶段性流动导致加拿大华人新移民的异质性本质。加拿大移民选择政策和华人新移民的阶段性流动,共同对加拿大华人新移民的异质性变迁产生了双重影响。     

刑事附带民事诉讼对被害人救助的不足及解决路径

刑事法律制度缺乏对刑事被害人的充分关注。刑事附带民事诉讼制度并未充分发挥保障刑事被害人合法权益的作用。虽然刑事和解制度在一定程度上缓解了刑事被害人获得赔偿的问题,但囿于刑事和解的适用范围,遭受严重伤害的刑事被害人的赔偿仍存在较大困难。且在媒体报道案件的过程中,往往侧重关注犯罪人,忽略被害人,从而加大了社会大众对被害人救助的不确定性。故此,应当探索和完善刑事被害人救助制度,以形成对刑事附带民事诉讼制度的有益补充,以为将来刑事诉讼法正式确认刑事被害人的求偿权作出有益的探索。     

Property Crime Victims' Decision to Notify the Police: Social,Cognitive, and Affective Determinants

Previous research suggests that 3 general processes underlie the decision of property crime victims to notify the police: One that is cognitively driven by reward/cost considerations, one that is affectively driven, and another that is socially driven. This study is the first to employ a community sample of crime victims to compare the 3 processes within a single study. Computer-assisted interviews were conducted with 422 property crime victims (n = 129 burglary, n = 293 theft) located via a random digit dialing procedure. Logistic regression analyses showed that each process independently accounted for a significant amount of the variance in victim reporting, and that there were no interactions among the three processes in predicting reporting. Of the 3 processes, social influence was the best predictor of reporting. Analysis of the affect-driven process showed that reporting was primarily a function of the level of fear rather than anger or the level of generalized arousal upon discovering the crime.