History of Victims of Crime

<p>This book examines the evolution of the contemporary crime victim’s procedural place within modern Western societies. Taking the history of the Irish crime victim as a case study, the work charts the place of victims within criminal justice over time. This evolves from the expansive latitude that they had during the eighteenth century, to their major relegation to witness and informer in the nineteenth, and back to a more contemporary recapturing of some of their previous centrality. The book also studies what this has meant for the position of suspects and offenders as well as the population more generally. Therefore, some analysis is devoted to examining its impact on an offender’s right to fair trial and social forms. It is held that the modern crime victim has transcended its position of marginality. This happened not only in law, but as the consequence of the victim’s new role as a key sociopolitical stakeholder. This work flags the importance of victim rights conferrals, and the social transformations that engendered such trends. In this way victim re-emergence is evidenced as being not just a legal change, but a consequence of several more recent sociocultural transformations in our societies. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy makers in criminal law, human rights law, criminology, and legal history.</p> <p>Acknowledgements </p><p>Table of Instruments </p><p>Case Law </p><p>1 Introduction </p><p>Context </p><p>Research question </p><p>Methodology </p><p>Contribution to knowledge </p><p>Structure </p><p>PART I</p><p>Historical context </p><p>2 A contextual study of victim centrality in eighteenth-century Britain </p><p>Introduction </p><p>The eighteenth century </p><p>Politics </p><p>The victim of crime </p><p>In the popular imagination </p><p>Compounding </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>3 The causes and outcomes of the exclusion of victims from the nineteenth century Irish justice system </p><p>Introduction </p><p>The nineteenth-century causes of victim exclusion </p><p>A fading noblesse oblige and a laissez-faire revolution </p><p>Urbanisationwithin an industrialising Ireland </p><p>Greater resident numbers move to cities </p><p>Problems with the victim-centred system are emphasised </p><p>The prevalent hesitancy regarding pursuing actions </p><p>Britain’s closest colony lists towards revolution </p><p>British hegemonic rule becomes almost impossible </p><p>The “fear of the crowd” and a move from “status to contract” </p><p>Disorder sees social unrest become a persistent Irish issue </p><p>The“Leviathan State” engenders punitive advancements </p><p>Novel organisations begin dictating chastisement </p><p>Reformalters regulation of juridical frames </p><p>Traditionally overlooked transgressions Are prosecuted </p><p>The impactof victim exclusion in nineteenth-century Britain </p><p>Punishment becomes successfully centralised </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>PART II</p><p>Sociological transformation </p><p>4 Feminism and victimology highlight hidden victimisation </p><p>Introduction </p><p>Victimology </p><p>The birth of the study of victims </p><p>Feminism </p><p>Consciousness-raising and -changing </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>5 Domestic drivers of change re-establish the victim </p><p>Introduction </p><p>Reported crime rates—from stability to disorder </p><p>The low crime society of the 1940s and 1950s </p><p>The Evental moments that qualitatively changed crime </p><p>Watershed moments in Irish criminal history </p><p>The evolution of victim advocacy in Ireland </p><p>The emergence of the victim’s voice in the public sphere </p><p>Media reporting </p><p>Graphic and pervasive crime portrayals </p><p>Mass victimisation surveys </p><p>Data suggests an increase in the reporting of victimisation </p><p>Victims of child abuse </p><p>The victim in the consciousness of the Irish people </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>PART III</p><p>Legal reformative evolution </p><p>6 Charting the Irish victim’s juridical re-integration—the evolution of the victim as a rights bearer in Ireland </p><p>Introduction </p><p>Supranational instruments provide victims with entitlements </p><p>International law courts allocate privileges to victims </p><p>The Irish judiciary recognise the victim as a rights holder </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>7 The legal reincorporation of the crime victim </p><p>Introduction </p><p>The protection and accommodation of victims </p><p>An expanded criminal calendar </p><p>Pre-trial reforms </p><p>Preliminary investigations </p><p>Trial reforms </p><p>Greater account taken of victim privacy during disclosures </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>8 Legal reincorporation of victims after trial </p><p>Post-trial reforms </p><p>Introduction </p><p>Civil process reforms </p><p>The civil law—a viable justice avenue </p><p>Conclusion </p><p>9 Conclusion </p><p>Bibliography </p><p>Index</p>