Transforming policy into practice - developing victim sensitive justice systems

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Victim Support Europe (VSE) is the leading European umbrella organisation, advocating for the rights of all victims of crimes. VSE brings together around 80 members from across Europe and beyond, who provide support to more than 3 million victims every year.

VSE has developed a number of visionary concepts, including a policy paper on a National Framework for Victim Support, a discussion paper on Safe Justice for Victims of Crimes, accompanied by a Model Provisions Paper setting out VSE's vision for the next EU Victims Directive, and one on transforming how we communicate with victims. These papers elaborate a vision for a paradigm shift in responding to the needs of victims.

The papers recognise that criminal justice systems are poor in responding to the needs of victims. Core solutions are proposed on determining victims needs, establishing support in criminal proceedings, ensuring effective participation through legal support, and enabling communication of victims.

A number of multi-national projects have analysed the situation on the ground and developed and tested operation solutions. These include – BeneVict, an analysis of practical implementation of victims rights in 26 EU States, Project Covis - led by Victim Support Sweden (Brottsofferjouren Sverige) which is exploring the core requirements of court-based victim support services and how to implement them, the LINK project, which is looking into the availability of procedural accommodations for children with disabilities, the AREV project which developed needs assessment and referral tools, and FYDO which developed facility dogs which support victims within criminal proceedings.

This roundtable led by VSE will bring together key academics and practitioners to discuss the results of these policy papers and projects focused on three important aspects of a victim centric justice system, namely needs assessment processes, delivering support within criminal proceedings, enabling legal support of victims, and communicating effectively with them.

Subtopic

• Topic 4: Victimology / Victims’ rights (Victimology WG)

Chair

• Levent Altan, Victim Support Europe

Discussants

• Aleksandra Ivankovic, Victim Support Europe

• Frida Wheldon, Victim Support Sweden - BOJ

• Bruno Monteiro, Validity

• Antony Pemberton, Katholieke Universiteit of Leuven (KU Leuven)

• Suzan van der Aa, Maastricht University

• Simon Green, University of Hull