Part V: Conclusion

Whether restorative justice involves the exchange of videos between offender and victim, the provision of a letter of apology by the offender, face-to-face or shuttle mediation or community and/or family conferences, it is clear that victims derive “a great deal of solace from having the chance to ask their questions and have them answered at the dialogue, as well as having the opportunity to describe fully the short-and long-term consequences of the crime” (Miller 2011:172).

These encouraging and positive assessments of restorative justice programs underscore how deeply-entrenched the problems may be in the conventional criminal justice system. When there is an expressed preference for an alternative approach, it casts a shadow on the mainstream approach. At a minimum, policy makers should begin to consider moving as many cases as possible out of the conventional system into the alternative system for two reasons: a) to increase victim satisfaction; and b) to decrease the ever-increasing caseloads within a cumbersome and slow-moving criminal justice system.

Perhaps after four decades of law reform to support and assist victims, one would think that we have reached the end of the journey and that we have uncovered all we need to know about victims and their rights. There is still much that needs to be explored and some of this exploration relates to rudimentary questions like what are the precise needs of crime victims and how these needs may differ for different crimes. After being silenced for most of the 20th century, it may take many decades of speaking before we truly understand how the victim can be most effectively and fairly integrated into our system of criminal justice.

Beyond the necessity of exploring the needs, demands and entitlements of crime victims in a theoretically and empirically sound fashion, the problem of professional neutralization must be addressed if we want to ensure that the fall of victims’ rights is not as spectacular and rapid as its rise. Although the problem of professional resistance has not been studied as extensively in the past two decades, it is clear that the practical implementation of victims’ rights has never matched the political rhetoric. It would be easy to account for some of the practical shortcomings as being a product of fiscal constraints, but this explanation only holds weight with respect to welfare rights. With respect to the right to participate in the process, a lack of funding has no impact on this right, and moving forward the important question which needs to be asked, researched and studied is whether legal professionals genuinely welcome and embrace such participation or whether legal culture still views the victim as an intruder who should just leave the professionals alone to do their arduous job of trying to achieve justice.Â