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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.
The previous chapter detailed the legal rights which victims of crime have been afforded in Ireland. This chapter focuses on service rights which complement these legal rights. Service rights ‘refer to services which do not affect procedure, such as information provided about case progress’ (Hoyle, 2012 : 407). These rights are representative of the ‘welfare model’ of victims’ rights protection (Rogan, 2006a ). Since the provision of services to victims does not interfere with criminal procedure or potentially affect defendants’ due process rights, service
and civil spheres, and it serves to open up the operational self-enclosure that exists under a state/accused model of justice. Juridification of this kind is providing victims with a stronger legal status and permits their claims to be severed from more public-interest considerations. It will help to ensure that the intersubjective dimensions of the crime conflict are increasingly recognised. Chapter 4 considered service provision for victims of crime. Service rights represent, in practice, the most significant source of support and protection for victims as
tendency to focus on basic service rights in training, such as the right to information (under Article 4 and 6) or the right to written acknowledgement of a formal complaint (under Article 5), as lawyers, police officers and other criminal justice workers are likely to be more comfortable with such rights and their ability to deliver on them. However, the focus on the victim's experience in a broader sense in the Directive will require training front-line professionals on how best to engage with victims sensitively and with compassion. Many of those working within the
to implement the navigation articles. Further, Hübner argued that a restrictive interpretation of freedom of navigation had been applied to the Rhine, with regular service rights reserved for riparian states. Technically, Hübner was correct. 15 However, Lord Cowley had the backing of all the others and retorted that just because the Rhine Commission wrongly applied the Vienna principles did not mean it should be used as a precedent for the Danube Commission or as proof that only riparian states had the right to free
in labour or administrative law in order to ensure a merit-based and impartial civil service (Wise, 1996). This has often entailed tightly regulated careeradvancement and payment structures that have provided little room for local managerial discretion. The rise of NPM and new HRM practices has put the legal position of civil servants under pressure in a number of European countries over the last two decades or so. Accordingly, many countries have seen the elimination of special civil-service rights and responsibilities. In Europe, these include Denmark, Italy, the