A History of Victims of Crime

Acknowledgements Table of Instruments Case Law 1 Introduction Context Research question Methodology Contribution to knowledge Structure PART I Historical context 2 A contextual study of victim centrality in eighteenth-century Britain Introduction The eighteenth century Politics The victim of crime In the popular imagination Compounding Conclusion 3 The causes and outcomes of the exclusion of victims from the nineteenth century Irish justice system Introduction The nineteenth-century causes of victim exclusion A fading noblesse oblige and a laissez-faire revolution Urbanisationwithin an industrialising Ireland Greater resident numbers move to cities Problems with the victim-centred system are emphasised The prevalent hesitancy regarding pursuing actions Britain’s closest colony lists towards revolution British hegemonic rule becomes almost impossible The “fear of the crowd” and a move from “status to contract” Disorder sees social unrest become a persistent Irish issue The“Leviathan State” engenders punitive advancements Novel organisations begin dictating chastisement Reformalters regulation of juridical frames Traditionally overlooked transgressions Are prosecuted The impactof victim exclusion in nineteenth-century Britain Punishment becomes successfully centralised Conclusion PART II Sociological transformation 4 Feminism and victimology highlight hidden victimisation Introduction Victimology The birth of the study of victims Feminism Consciousness-raising and -changing Conclusion 5 Domestic drivers of change re-establish the victim Introduction Reported crime rates—from stability to disorder The low crime society of the 1940s and 1950s The Evental moments that qualitatively changed crime Watershed moments in Irish criminal history The evolution of victim advocacy in Ireland The emergence of the victim’s voice in the public sphere Media reporting Graphic and pervasive crime portrayals Mass victimisation surveys Data suggests an increase in the reporting of victimisation Victims of child abuse The victim in the consciousness of the Irish people Conclusion PART III Legal reformative evolution 6 Charting the Irish victim’s juridical re-integration—the evolution of the victim as a rights bearer in Ireland Introduction Supranational instruments provide victims with entitlements International law courts allocate privileges to victims The Irish judiciary recognise the victim as a rights holder Conclusion 7 The legal reincorporation of the crime victim Introduction The protection and accommodation of victims An expanded criminal calendar Pre-trial reforms Preliminary investigations Trial reforms Greater account taken of victim privacy during disclosures Conclusion 8 Legal reincorporation of victims after trial Post-trial reforms Introduction Civil process reforms The civil law—a viable justice avenue Conclusion 9 Conclusion Bibliography Index