Another announcement about victims

Jack Straw has announced a new national victims’ service. It won’t be a statutory service, but a sort of unit with a paltry £8 million funding. This comes seven years after legislation was passed to set up a commissioner for victims office. This has not happened, despite being announced several times, until Sara Payne was asked to do something but without the office, the pay or the status provided by resources. Now we are getting another announcement about victims, just before the election, which seems to be an amazing coincidence.

I have many criticisms of the proposals. The rhetoric is damaging as it creates a false distinction between victims and offenders, whereas the reality is more complex. Of course there are completely innocent victims and people who commit horrendous crimes because they have made a rational choice. But very often the event is more complicated and people who commit crimes are badly damaged, mentally ill, addicted, drunk, or are part of the family. Ignoring this complexity and pretending that there are two completely distinct races, the good and the bad, results in irrelevant and inappropriate responses to offenders and also misleads victims.

The Howard League has been suggesting for years that the criminal justice system should be re-focussed as a victims justice system, based around a model that would uphold the rule of law but whose objective would be to solve the problem and heal the damage done by the crime. Rather than exploiting victims in the run up to elections by using them to increase punishments, victims’ needs should be central to the system. But this would also involve the not so innocent victims, as addressing their needs and seeking to heal them would help to prevent repetition.

We have also suggested a recasting of the probation service as a “resolution” service. This would provide a wide ranging service to the community to resolve disputes before they become anti-social behaviour or crime. This would work to prevent people becoming victims. It would provide a neighbourhood conflict resolution service from noise pollution to fly tipping, children misbehaving to parking problems.

There have been far too many small changes to the system that often have the opposite effect to that intended. I was talking to a former high court judge when we both emerged from hearing Jack Straw’s lecture this morning. He told me that the victim surcharge of £15 imposed on fines had drastically reduced the use of fines in the crown court – how can a judge impose a £250,000 fine on a white collar criminal and then announce in open court that he had to impose a £15 victims’ surcharge, it looks like an insult. Also, the parole board is going to be asked to assess how remorseful a prisoner is before they can be released – that is a pretty tricky ask, particularly for example with domestic violence where the pattern is one of remorse and violence, remorse and violence.

Too many simplistic announcements with too little real thought makes for muddle and mistakes.