By Tess Bartlett - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

for victims’ rights have come from new victims’ rights groups such as CitizensUnited for Safety and Justice in Canada (CUSJ, 2006) and Justice For All in theUnited States (Justice For All, 2008). These groups differ markedly from those ofearlier years as their personal views and demands usually speak for a small minorityof crime victims (usually those in sensational murder cases) and at times mayrepresent nobody’s views but their own (Fattah, 1992b). They commonly draw onpersonal experience and ‘common sense’ arguments giving little consideration toevidence based research and analysis (Pratt & Clark, 2005). This focus on personalexperience makes them highly desirable to the media, as this type of reporting suitsthe more sensationalised and dramatic approach that was noted above.The formation of these new groups stemmed from the perceived failure of the courtsto take into account factors of moral guilt, and the amount of harm caused by crimeto innocent members of the law­abiding community (Harris, 1991). On the JusticeFor All website, for instance, the following is noted: ‘Justice For All shall act as anadvocate for change in a criminal justice system that is inadequate in protecting thelives and property of law abiding citizens’ (Justice For All, 2008: Par. 1). Thissystem inadequacy has motivated these groups to aim to place victims and theirfamilies at the heart of the criminal justice system (Sarat, 1997), while taking poweraway from experts in criminal justice who are regarded as being out of touch withordinary citizens. As a result, politicians have increasingly addressed victims ofcrime when implementing penal policy. In his speech on proposed anti­socialbehaviour legislation, for example, then Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to‘rebalance’ the system in favour of the victim and ‘the decent, law­abidingmajority…’ (Blair, 2006: Par. 59). The Prime Minister stated that widespread publicanxiety surrounding crime and justice was the reason for the legislation. He furthernoted that this anxiety was generated by a number of individuals who failed to abideby the rules and who were subsequently ‘getting away with it’ (Blair, 2006: Par. 9),thus implying that these individuals were not being punished with sufficient severity.It is the victim then, or groups speaking on their behalf, that have become central tovictims’, where the emphasis has been on victimisation rather than on challenging traditionalassumptions of male dominated criminology. Green (1993) argues that in many instances this resultedin a strengthening of the state when it came to women and crime which in the end resulted in anincreasingly punitive system.16