Seen But Not Heard: Seeking justice in a system where victims feel invisible
On the World Day for International Justice, our CEO Geraldine Hanna reflects on local justice in a global context, what it means for victims of crime in Northern Ireland, and how far we have yet to go to meet the expectations of victims of crime.
The World Day for International Justice on 17th July shines an annual spotlight on criminal justice on a global scale, from the work of the International Criminal Court to prosecute crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, to the global UN machinery designed to uphold human rights and equality.
On a day like this I feel it’s important to remind ourselves of why these grandiose institutions exist in the first place – because ordinary people in our communities become victims of crime every day. Whether that’s the woman who has been raped in Kinshasa, or the man who was robbed at gunpoint in Cookstown, we can all agree that acts of violence or violation against one person or one section of the community are an affront to us all.
This year, to mark International Justice Day, we asked our clients who had been supported by Victim Support NI to answer the question “What does justice mean to you?” The answers were as varied as the people who shared their thoughts with us, and gave us a unique insight into how victims of crime feel about their experience of the criminal justice system.
Responses ranged from the perfunctory (“Justice is a person being convicted or not due to the evidence present”), to the personal (“I want to be believed”), to the angry (“There is absolutely no justice coming through the system, I wouldn’t do it again, it’s an absolute joke what we’ve been put through”).
Many replies described what we might logically think a criminal justice system should look like, where “people pay for the crime that they commit”, a perpetrator is “held accountable for their actions” and “the punishment fits the crime”.
Yet the reality of our criminal justice system is that often it does not meet these seemingly basic and reasonable standards. In fact, the system is not actually explicitly designed to do so.
When a case goes to trial, it is representatives of Queen and State who take the defendant to court, not the victim. In fact, the injured party or victim of the crime is merely considered to be a ‘witness’ in the State’s prosecution of a defendant. The thinking behind this is that any crime committed is an assault on society as a whole, and therefore it is the State who prosecute crimes. The practical outworking of this, however, is that victims of crime are reduced to a third party in what they may consider to be their trial or their quest for justice.
We see the result of that disconnect every day in our Witness Service, which provides support to victims and witnesses of crime who come to court to give evidence and seek justice. Victims are shocked to find out that they will not have legal representation, that the Public Prosecutor is not ‘their lawyer’, and that they are regarded as only a witness to their own crime.
Some victims who we support also find it difficult to come to terms with what the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle means in their own personal context. Although you would be pushed to find a citizen who disagrees with the presumption of innocence in general, once someone has been victimised by crime they may find that the lengths to which the system stretches to preserve the presumption of innocence is traumatising or re-victimising.
Victims may find it difficult to wrap their heads around the fact that the defendant has been granted bail in spite of what they have done. They might be puzzled as to why the prosecution delivers dispassionate re-tellings of the evidence provided, while the defence is free to focus on the ‘good character’ of the defendant and engage in what victims feel to be an assassination of their own good character. They may balk at the premise that the word ‘victim’ is not allowed to be uttered in the course of the trial, even though they may feel catastrophically victimised by the crime committed against them. They may wonder why the justice process takes so long, allowing their memories to fade before they reach trial. They may question why, in an age of cutting-edge technology at our fingertips, failing technology continues to be a major cause of delayed or stalled trials.
It is of course right that these principles form the cornerstone of our criminal justice system. Nonetheless, while the principles of our criminal justice system are conceptually just, the resulting ‘invisibility’ of victims in the process often leaves them feeling that justice and fairness are elusive.
The gap between the reality of the justice process, and what victims of crime think justice should look like, have been examined in some detail by Sir John Gillen in his review of the law and procedure in serious sexual offence cases. While the review focused on sexual assault and rape cases, many of the conclusions are applicable to the criminal justice system at large – that delay, lack of participatory rights, and secondary victimisation by the process all result in a justice system that feels far from just or fair.
In our view, the full implementation of the Gillen recommendations would make significant strides towards rebalancing procedural justice in favour of victims and defendants. We strongly encourage all agencies to act swiftly in the implementation of these recommendations.
Ultimately, though, we at Victim Support NI understand that justice is a highly personal thing for victims, and that we must listen to what they are telling us when seeking to reform the system. We must put our assumptions about who victims are, what they want, and what they regard as justice aside. We must recognise that victims of crime are as diverse as the society in which we live. And we must create a system that is capable, within reason, of delivering justice for all, regardless of how ‘justice’ is defined.
So what have victims of crime told us?
Firstly, the notion that revenge and punishment is the go-to ideal of justice is by no means universally true. Most often we support victims whose primary motivation is to prevent the same thing from happening to someone else, and they are willing to put themselves at risk of further harm to ensure this. We also hear time and again how victims just want an apology, an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and for perpetrators to understand the pain and suffering that they have caused.
Others engage in the criminal justice process because they seek official validation that what they are saying is true and that what they have suffered is unacceptable. In our experience, where the criminal justice system does not provide this, the Criminal Injury Compensation process can. Many of our clients seeking compensation tell us that it was not the financial award but the fact that they were believed that left them feeling more satisfied with the process.
It is often common that victims engage with the criminal justice system to seek closure and draw a line under this challenging period in their lives. In theory, our system should be capable of at least going some way to provide this. In reality, however, the lengthy delay in bringing cases to trial and the gruelling nature of the trial process itself can turn optimism to bitterness and can open partially healed wounds. These failings perhaps highlight the broader shortcomings of a statutory machinery which tends to pigeonhole issues and people. Because for many victims, justice is not just the trial process: it is a wider journey encompassing their health, wellbeing, and restoration of their formerly safe, happy lives. It is therefore unsurprising that by placing the entire onus for justice on the justice system that we set ourselves up to fail.
With all this in mind, we must also bring ourselves back to the here and now, and to those who have been victimised by crime – not in a vague, distant future, but today. We must take action now for victims in need of our support, even in spite of our absent Government and dwindling budgets.
In hearing what victims of crime are telling us, we must all ask ‘what can we do better?’
And, while the system in which we work is by no means perfect, much can be done within its confines to make things better. The Victim Charter, which sets out the entitlements of victims of crime and is enshrined in Northern Irish law, is a useful checklist of everything that criminal justice agencies can do to make the criminal justice process a more victim-friendly one. And within its 22 entitlements lie some components of what justice looks like to many of the victims who answered the question ‘what does justice mean to you?’: a transparent, responsive system where all parties are treated with dignity and respect.