Proposed new victims’ legislation

The Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird has today published a new paper setting out her ambitions for the long-awaited Victims’ Law and calls for criminal justice agencies to be more accountable and for victims to be accorded “participants’ rights". Work with Offenders reviews the proposals

The Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird has today published a new paper setting out her ambitions for the long-awaited Victims’ Law and calls for criminal justice agencies to be more accountable and for victims to be accorded “participants’ rights".

The Government has been promising a “Victims’ Law” for some years now and the report sets out Dame Vera’s hopes for the legislation. The report highlights the decline in victim confidence in the criminal justice system, with increasing numbers of victims withdrawing their support for prosecution, with others saying they would be unwilling to testify in court again or express increasing dissatisfaction with their treatment by criminal justice practitioners.

The Commissioner argues that victim participation is essential to the delivery of criminal justice and the report makes the case for improving the treatment of victims in a series of practical measures, giving them both confidence in the system and to help them to cope and recover from the impact of crime.

The report is divided into three key themes:

• Victim Participation in the justice system
• Monitoring compliance with victim entitlements
• Ensuring equality of access to justice for all victim

Victim partcipation 

Dame Vera argues that our adversarial legal system means that the defendant is at the centre of the court process while victims are marginalised even if they have suffered serious injury, sexual assault or the death of a loved one. The legal concept is that the state prosecutes on behalf of all the public. But Dame Vera emphasises that there is a great difference between the interests of members of the public in having a good criminal justice system and the profound interest in one specific case of a deeply affected victim. She argues that a Victims Law is an opportunity for the UK Government to give victims a distinct legal status within the criminal justice system, separate from that of the wider public and the Crown, calling for a reconceptualising of the victim, not simply as an onlooker or maybe a witness, but as a statutory participant, with statutory rights to be informed, supported and to be able to make informed choices.

Compliance and accountability 

The report highlights the fact that many victims are not receiving their entitlements under the Victims’ Code, saying that the existing compliance monitoring systems are ineffective.

The statutory provisions creating the role of the Victims’ Commissioner are in the same Act of Parliament as those creating the Victims’ Code. Whilst the Code gives victims entitlements, the Commissioner is there to give them a voice and to review the operation of the Code on their behalf. However, the Commissioner has few real powers: there is no statutory requirement for agencies to either consider or respond to the Victims’ Commissioner’s recommendations for change and improvement. Since April 2019, Police and Crime Commissioners are responsible for monitoring key Code compliance at a local level. However, at present, Police and Crime Commissioners have no power to request data from other agencies and are reliant on local goodwill.

Equality of access 

The report also shines a light on the fact that people from a range of different minorities (including children, people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities and people with immigration status issues) are both more likely to be victims of crime and less likely to report or obtain access to specialist services than majority populations. Service provision tailored to these groups varies considerably across the country.

The report makes a total of 34 recommendations including calls for the government to put victims’ rights on a proper statutory footing, with monitoring and compliance mechanisms to hold agencies to account; to lay out in law the role and rights of victims as participants in the criminal justice system; and to establish a single unified victims’ complaints system.

Specific recommendations include:

• Rape victims to have a statutory entitlement to receive free and independent legal advice when it’s felt the victims’ right to privacy is threatened by undue data requests by the police, prosecutors or courts.
• Police and CPS to be required to advise a victim on details and progress of investigations, including seeking victims’ views on modifying or discontinuing charges, allowing victims to make representations, and responding to those representations and providing reasons for a decision to a victim.
• Victims of anti-social behaviour to be recognised as victims of crime and receive statutory entitlement to access victim support services.
• Court-ordered compensation to be paid up-front by the courts, leaving the offender to repay HMCTS and not the victim. This would follow the Dutch model, whereby the courts pay the victim compensation directly and recoup the money from offenders.
• Creating a framework for monitoring and delivering equality of access for all victims to support and to justice, including an obligation for agencies to report on how they are meeting their equality duties.

Readers interested in this report can see it in full here.