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This book examines the changing role of victims of crime in the Irish criminal process. It documents the variety of ways in which victims of crime are now being written into the criminal process discourse and practice in Ireland, while taking account of existing challenges. The book seeks to show how the justice system is emerging from hegemonic dominance and examines the conditions which have made their re-emergence possible and the commitments, practices and strategic priorities shaping this inclusionary momentum. It demonstrates how the paradigm of prosecuting and investigating crime moved from an intensely local, unstructured and victim-precipitated arrangement to a structured, adversarial, state-monopolised event where the accused was largely silenced and the victim was rendered invisible. The book documents the black-letter, technocratic details of how victims have been juridically provided for since the late 1980s in Ireland. It then focuses on service rights which complement the legal rights which victims of crime have been afforded in Ireland. The book also charts the challenges which continue to face service users, providers and the wider criminal justice sector in the delivery of services which are responsive to the needs of victims and meet increased demands under the EU Directive on Victims' Rights. Innovative policy options adopted in other jurisdictions, including the creation of an Ombudsman for Victims of Crime and measures to unify service provision within the sector, including Witness Care Units, are also explored.
Introduction During the majority of the twentieth century the crime victim in the criminal justice systems in most common law jurisdictions was afforded no meaningful role or voice. Criminal justice systems were built on the notion that the state was the injured party. The crime victim was merely the complainant who activated the criminal justice system by notifying the police of the crime suffered. If an arrest was made, the victim was then a witness for the prosecution and treated like any other piece of evidence for the prosecution. While the prevailing
relatively narrow, horizontal-generational groups of friends and relatives (Barry, 2019 ). Recent investigative journalism reveals that Albanian crime victims’ appeals to kanun and its associated honour codes, with those exerting power and control within such networks (in contrast to historical prescriptions of kanun ), are unlikely to succeed if contradicting any criminal
crime victims are also addressed by a wide variety of victims’ organisations, alliances and associations. While a significant proportion are specialised in nature, dealing with specific types of victim or services, there are also some key national groups. For example, the national Crime Victims Helpline, which represents a proactive initiative to support crime victims, was launched in 2005. Moreover, the revelations brought about as a result of inquiries over the last two decades into Church sexual abuse and institutional abuse − which occurred in the carceral
The election of Barack Obama was a milestone in US history with tremendous symbolic importance for the black community. But was this symbolism backed up by substance? Did ordinary black people really benefit under the first black president?
This is the question that Andra Gillespie sets out to answer in Race and the Obama Administration. Using a variety of methodological techniques—from content analysis of executive orders to comparisons of key indicators, such as homeownership and employment rates under Clinton, Bush, and Obama— the book charts the progress of black causes and provides valuable perspective on the limitations of presidential power in addressing issues of racial inequality. Gillespie uses public opinion data to investigate the purported disconnect between Obama’s performance and his consistently high ratings among black voters, asking how far the symbolic power of the first black family in the White House was able to compensate for the compromises of political office.
Scholarly but accessible, Race and the Obama Administration will be of interest to students and lecturers in US politics and race studies, as well as to general readers who want to better understand the situation of the black community in the US today and the prospects for its improvement.
Deporting Black Britons provides an ethnographic account of deportation from the UK to Jamaica. It traces the painful stories of four men who were deported after receiving criminal convictions in the UK. For each of the men, all of whom had moved to the UK as children, deportation was lived as exile – from parents, partners, children and friends – and the book offers portraits of survival and hardship in both the UK and Jamaica. Based on over four years of research, Deporting Black Britons describes the human consequences of deportation, while situating deportation stories within the broader context of policy, ideology, law and violence. It examines the relationship between racism, criminalisation and immigration control in contemporary Britain, suggesting new ways of thinking about race, borders and citizenship in these anti-immigrant times. Ultimately, the book argues that these stories of exile and banishment should orient us in the struggle against violent immigration controls, in the UK and elsewhere.
There is no soundtrack is a specific yet expansive study of sound tactics deployed in experimental media art today. It analyses how audio and visual elements interact and produce meaning, drawing from works by contemporary media artists ranging from Chantal Akerman, to Nam June Paik, to Tanya Tagaq. It then links these analyses to discussions on silence, voice, noise, listening, the soundscape, and other key ideas in sound studies. In making these connections, the book argues that experimental media art – avant-garde film, video art, performance, installation, and hybrid forms – produces radical and new audio-visual relationships that challenge and destabilize the visually-dominated fields of art history, contemporary art criticism, cinema and media studies, and cultural studies as well as the larger area of the human sciences. This book directly addresses what sound studies scholar Jonathan Sterne calls ‘visual hegemony’. It joins a growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship that is collectively sonifying the study of culture while defying the lack of diversity within the field by focusing on practitioners from transnational and diverse backgrounds. Therefore, the media artists discussed in this book are of interest to scholars and students who are exploring aurality in related disciplines including gender and feminist studies, queer studies, ethnic studies, postcolonial studies, urban studies, environmental analysis, and architecture. As such, There Is No Soundtrack makes meaningful connections between previously disconnected bodies of scholarship to build new, more complex and reverberating frameworks for the study of art, media, and sound.
The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).
supportive environment for victims of crime to date can be built upon to transform the experience of crime victims in Ireland. Transposition of the EU Directive on Victims’ Rights While the EU Directive on Victims’ Rights represents a great opportunity for criminal justice systems across Europe to strengthen the rights of victims and their families and to improve their experiences following a crime, positive steps must be taken to transpose the Directive and enshrine these rights in national law. 1 The Irish legislature and courts have taken steps over many years
. The chapter will also explore the gaps between the rhetoric and the realities of service provision for victims of crime in Ireland with reference to available research on their experiences. Guidelines on service provision for victims of crime International instruments emphasise the importance of the effective provision of services to crime victims. The UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power (UN Doc A/RES/40/34 (1985)) (hereafter the UN Declaration) provides that ‘[v]ictims should receive the necessary material