The victim impact statement according to the Spanish Victim’s Statute: An empirical project

• In Event: Victim Rights and Legislative Initiatives

Abstract

The main objective of 2012/29/EU Directive was the standardization and reinforcement of victim’s rights across European Union. This came to fruition in Spain with the approbation of the Victim’s Statute in 2015. This law includes general rights contained in the Directive such as information or restorative justice rights, but also includes a new one in European victim’s protection paradigm: the article 13 allows victims to participate at judicial decisions related to sentence enforcement. This has motivated the analysis of the Victim’s Statute from a criminal policy perspective to know if this Law has supposed an authentic progress of victim’s rights in Spain and the real impact of article 13. For that reason, an empirical research has been developed, based on semi-structured interviews to those collectives who have been more involved in the implementation of Victim’s Statute: judges, staff at victims assistance offices and victim associations. These interviews let us stablish a general valuation of Victim’s Statute implementation according two key points: the relevance of the right to be informed and the dual nature of this law because of the contrast between vindicative elements (participation at sentence enforcement) and reparation ones (restorative justice). In consequence, some criminal policy strategies have been proposed to enhance the implementation of this Law in terms of victim’s rights strengthen.

Authors

• Patricia Bello San Juan, University of Malaga

• Anabel Cerezo, University of Malaga