The victim's perspective

Abstract

All over the modern world, victims are the forgotten players in the drama of criminal justice, exploited for their evidence but otherwise abandoned. Victims say that little attention is given to the repair of the harm they have experienced personally, or to the psychological and emotional consequences of victimisation. They also say that they feel frustrated and alienated from the justice system, where both the process and the outcome of court procedures fail to take proper account of their perspective. The introduction by Canberra's police of a radical alternative to traditional court processing, called Diversionary Conferencing in the ACT, gives victims an opportunity to redress the shortcomings of the justice system from their point of view. It provides them with a forum to explain directly all the harm they have experienced as a result of the offence and to be part of the process that decides on a suitable outcome to repair that harm. Based on preliminary results from the evaluation study of conferencing being conducted by criminologists at the ANU, victims are faring better with this new alternative system. Conferences were introduced to Canberra in 1994 following juvenile justice reforms in New Zealand, where conferencing plays a major role, and after a similar system had been tried in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. Instead of prosecuting a case in court, where offenders admit responsibility for the crime the police may convene a conference attended by the people most affected by the crime: the victims, the offenders and their families and friends.

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