scholarly journals Taking trauma seriously

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Ellison ◽  
Vanessa E Munro
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Current Trial ◽  
Trauma Informed ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
The Government

Over the last two decades successive governments in England and Wales have stated a commitment to placing victims of crime at the heart of the criminal justice agenda. A raft of polices and reforming measures have been introduced with the declared aim of improving the experience and treatment of victims within the criminal process. Despite these developments, the government has recently conceded that the criminal justice process has continued to fall short—whether in relation to helping victims to recover in the aftermath of a crime or supporting them through the stresses of investigation and trial. In this article we argue that applying a trauma-informed lens to evaluate victim-centred initiatives helps to explain the failure of victim policy in England and Wales to fully deliver on its promise. We highlight the barriers that experiences of trauma can present to effective victim participation and the extent to which current trial processes are often liable to exacerbate rather than ameliorate trauma amongst a broad constituency of victims.

The Criminal Process

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Campbell ◽  
Andrew Ashworth ◽  
Mike Redmayne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Law ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
Area Of Study

The Criminal Process continues to provides a reflective, contextualized consideration of doctrinal, practical, and normative issues in criminal processes and procedures. The text draws on arguments from the law, research, policy, and principle, to present an overview of this area of study. It focuses on England and Wales, with occasional comparative references. The book includes new coverage of contemporary issues, such as the disclosure of evidence in criminal trials and the treatment of victims, and on diversity and discrimination within the criminal justice process. Further reading suggestions and discussion questions are included at the end of each chapter.

International and Comparative Legal Perspectives on Victim Participation in Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Manikis
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Common ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
Historical Developments

Victim participation in common law has evolved across history and jurisdictions. Historical developments within conceptions of crime, harms, and victims in common law as well as the different victims’ movements provide an understanding of the ways that victim participation has been shaped in more-recent common law criminal justice systems. Victim participation in the criminal legal process has also given rise to various debates, which suggests that providing active forms of engagement to victims remains controversial. The forms of victim participation are also diverse, and the literature has provided typologies of victim participation. Forms of participation also vary across jurisdictions and the different stages of the criminal justice process, including prosecutorial decisions, pretrial and trial proceedings, sentencing, parole, and clemency. Finally, research that focuses on victim participation in legal traditions beyond the common law would provide an additional and important contribution to the field.

scholarly journals Still Standing: Innocence work in England and Wales

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-239
Author(s):  
Louise Hewitt ◽  
Claire McGourlay
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Similar Work ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
Innocence Project

This article examines the two categories that have evolved in the literature concerning Innocence Projects; the pedagogical value of innocence work and the problems with associating the term innocence with the English criminal justice process. This research draws upon a study undertaken in 2017 by the Innocence Project London (unpublished) and another in 2020. Both studies sought to understand the extent to which organisations are undertaking innocence work in England and Wales.  This research is written from the perspective of the Directors of both the Innocence Project London and Manchester Innocence Project, and as a result, the projects are discussed at length in various sections. An effort has been made however, to discuss other organisations that undertake similar work in various parts of this article.

Navigating through the effects of ‘Cracked Trials’

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Kevin Kwok-yin Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Sliding Scale ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

‘Cracked trials’ have been identified as a major problem in the criminal justice process, causing wastage of resources and time for all parties involved. The sliding scale of sentence discounts was implemented in England and Wales to tackle the problem of ‘cracked trials’ through providing the greatest amount of sentence reduction for earlier guilty pleas and thereby discouraging defendants from entering late guilty pleas. The sliding scale has been recently implemented or is being considered by other common law jurisdictions. This article examines how legal practitioners in Hong Kong have navigated around the adverse effects of cracked trials prior to the implementation of the sliding scale and argues how the sliding scale of sentence discounts is problematic. The findings offer insights regarding strategies and reforms on other aspects of the criminal procedure in responding to late guilty pleas.

scholarly journals Victims of crime: culture, politics and criminal process in the twenty-first century

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-90
Author(s):  
Matthew Hall
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Areas Of Concern ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Turn

This paper sets out to marry three areas of concern to modern victimology. In the first instance the paper will explore the ‘cultural turn’ taken in our understandings of what it means to be a victim of crime in thetwenty-first century. McGarry and Walklate (2015) characterise such ‘cultural victimology’ as comprising a wider sharing and reflection of individual and collective victimisation experiences, on the one hand, and,on the other, the mapping of those experiences through the criminal justice process. This paper will explore the interaction between such cultural understandings of victimhood and the political and policy forces which,since at least the late 1990s, have pledged to ‘rebalance’ the criminal justice systems of England and Wales and other jurisdictions to put victims ‘at the heart’ of those processes.

scholarly journals Truth and procedural fairness in Chinese criminal procedure law

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Alexander Shytov ◽  
Peter Duff
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Procedural Fairness ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Criminal Procedure Law ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
Rapid Transformation

Chinese criminal procedural law has recently been undergoing rapid transformation. While the search for ‘truth’, embodied in a confession by the accused, has traditionally dominated the criminal process, efforts are now being made to secure more procedural fairness. This is exemplified by the introduction of rules to render inadmissible at trial confessions extorted from suspects by ill treatment. Unsurprisingly, it has proved difficult to shift the mindsets of the players in the criminal justice process. The new rules have not been fully implemented in many respects and there is still confusion over the criteria to be used by the courts in making decisions about inadmissibility. Further, it has proved difficult to enable defence lawyers to play a more active role in defending their clients and to render it normal for witnesses to testify at trial. This handicaps the drive to secure a better balance between the search for truth and procedural fairness in the Chinese criminal trial.

Fitness to be interviewed: decision-making in the mental health in-patient setting

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Allison Edwards ◽  
Simon Jackson ◽  
Keith J. B. Rix ◽  
Faisil Sethi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Legal System ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Psychiatric Setting ◽  
Police Interviews ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

SUMMARY When a patient in an in-patient psychiatric setting allegedly commits a crime, psychiatrists are sometimes asked to assess their fitness to be interviewed by the police. This article describes how to conduct this assessment, outlines the criminal justice process leading to police interviews (with particular reference to the legal system in England and Wales) and highlights practical issues to consider when assessing fitness to be interviewed in this context.

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