Imprisonment — in the Victim’s Interest?

Abstract

Until as recently as the last 10 years the response to crime in Britain has focused largely on the offender. The major pre-occupation has been with whether deterrence or control of criminal activity can be achieved through the punishment, treatment or rehabilitation of offenders by the State. Responding to crime in this way has resulted in little attention being focused on the other party involved in crime, namely the victim.¹ The low status afforded to victims by the criminal justice system appears somewhat paradoxical in view of the fact that it is the victim usually who bears the impact of criminal activity and, significantly for the criminal justice system, it is often the victim who determines whether an activity is officially labelled as a crime by deciding to make a report to the police.² Victim assistance is frequently crucial to criminal justice agents during the investigation of a crime and furthermore, prosecuting and securing a conviction would be very difficult without the co-operation and testimony of a victim as a witness at a court hearing. Yet, despite the obvious usefulness of victims to the criminal justice system recent research on victims has documented how the victim is largely ‘forgotten’ by the system and how his involvement with the system can in fact lead to a ‘secondary victimisation’.³