Victims and Criminal Justice: A History by Pamela Cox, Robert Shoemaker, Heather Shore ISBN 9780191938818, 9780192846488, 0191938815, 0192846485 instant download

Victims and Criminal Justice: A History by Pamela Cox, Robert Shoemaker, Heather Shore ISBN 9780191938818, 9780192846488, 0191938815, 0192846485 instant download

This unique book sets out how crime victims’ experiences of, and engagement with, the process of criminal justice changed dramatically between the late seventeenth and late twentieth centuries. At the start of our period, victims drove the English criminal justice system. They brought prosecutions as complainants and prosecutors, gave evidence as witnesses, and put up personal rewards for the recovery of lost goods or claimed rewards for securing convictions. By the end, victims had been firmly displaced as the state took virtually full responsibility for the process of prosecution. This book is the first of its kind to examine both the origins and impacts of key legal, procedural, and institutional changes introduced in England and Wales in order to encourage and govern prosecutions—moving from rewards to rights. Combining qualitative analysis of a range of textual sources with quantitative analysis of large datasets of over 235,000 criminal prosecutions, we explore how victims were defined in law, what the law allowed and encouraged them to do, who they were in social and economic terms, how they participated in the criminal justice system, why many were unwilling or unable to engage in that system, and why some campaigned for specific rights. Our account situates these shifts in victim participation in criminal trials in the context of broader political, social, and cultural changes. In doing so, it places current policy debates in a much-needed critical historical context.