SUMMARY - Who Speaks for Victims in Court and Policy?
Crime affects not just abstract statistics but real people—victims whose lives are disrupted, damaged, or destroyed by others' actions. Yet the criminal justice system was designed primarily to determine guilt and impose punishment, not to address victims' needs or amplify their voices. In recent decades, Canada has made significant strides toward recognizing victims' rights, but fundamental questions remain about who truly speaks for victims in courts and in the policy debates that shape how our society responds to crime.
The Evolving Role of Victims in Criminal Justice
Historical Marginalization
The modern criminal justice system emerged as a contest between the state and the accused, with victims relegated to the role of witnesses—sources of evidence rather than participants with independent standing. The prosecutor represents the Crown, not the victim. The accused has constitutional rights to a fair trial. The victim, until recently, had few formal rights at all.
This marginalization had practical consequences. Victims were often uninformed about case progress, surprised by plea bargains, excluded from hearings, and ignored at sentencing. Their harm was acknowledged rhetorically but rarely centred in actual proceedings. Many victims experienced the criminal process as a second victimization—bureaucratic, impersonal, and indifferent to their pain.
The Victims' Rights Movement
Beginning in the 1980s, advocacy by victims' groups, victim service organizations, and sympathetic legislators gradually expanded victims' recognition within the criminal justice system. Provincial victims' bills of rights established principles of respectful treatment and information provision. Federal legislation created the victim surcharge and victim fine surcharge programs. Victim impact statements gave victims a formal voice at sentencing.
The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, enacted in 2015, codified victims' rights to information, protection, participation, and restitution. Victims gained the right to be informed about investigations and court proceedings, to have their security considered, to participate in proceedings through victim impact statements, and to seek restitution from offenders. These rights, while significant, remain subject to limitations and are often unenforced in practice.
Who Represents Victims?
Victims Themselves
Individual victims can, to a limited extent, represent themselves within the criminal justice system. Victim impact statements allow victims to describe the harm they have suffered and have that information considered at sentencing. Victims may also participate in parole hearings to express concerns about offender release. Some victims become advocates, drawing on their experiences to influence policy debates.
Yet individual victim representation faces inherent limitations. Most victims lack legal knowledge to navigate complex systems. Trauma may impair their ability to participate effectively. And individual stories, however compelling, cannot represent the diverse experiences of all victims or the systemic patterns that shape victimization.
Victim Services
Across Canada, victim services programs—often based in police departments, Crown offices, or community agencies—provide information, support, and assistance to crime victims. These services help victims understand their rights, navigate court processes, prepare impact statements, and access compensation programs. In some jurisdictions, specialized services support particular victim populations, such as domestic violence survivors or families of homicide victims.
Victim services workers serve as intermediaries between victims and the justice system, but their role is support rather than advocacy. They help victims exercise existing rights but generally cannot advocate for systemic changes or challenge prosecutorial decisions that may not align with victims' wishes.
Crown Prosecutors
Crown prosecutors often claim to represent victims' interests, and many genuinely work to keep victims informed and consider their perspectives. Yet the Crown's duty is to the administration of justice, not to individual victims. Prosecutors may make decisions—about charges, plea negotiations, sentencing positions—that serve broader justice interests but conflict with victims' desires. The Crown cannot be victims' advocate when Crown and victim interests diverge.
Advocacy Organizations
Various organizations claim to speak for victims in policy debates. Some are grassroots organizations founded by victims themselves. Others are service providers who work with victims daily. Still others are advocacy groups with particular ideological orientations—tough-on-crime organizations that invoke victims to support punitive policies, or restorative justice advocates who argue that healing-centred approaches better serve victim needs.
These organizations play important roles in policy development, but questions arise about whose voices they amplify. Victim populations are diverse; survivors of sexual assault, families of murder victims, victims of property crime, and targets of hate crimes have different experiences and potentially different needs. No single organization can claim to represent all victims, and some organizations may represent particular constituencies or ideological positions more than victims as a whole.
Tensions and Complexities
Punitive vs. Restorative Approaches
Debates about criminal justice often assume that victims uniformly want harsh punishment for offenders. Some do—the desire for retribution is understandable when one has been harmed. But research suggests victim preferences are more varied than commonly assumed. Many victims prioritize acknowledgment, information, and assurance that the offender will not harm others over lengthy incarceration. Some prefer restorative processes that allow dialogue with offenders over adversarial trials. Others simply want to move on, finding ongoing court involvement retraumatizing.
Organizations and politicians invoking victims to support punitive policies may not represent the full range of victim perspectives. Conversely, restorative justice advocates must be careful not to pressure victims into processes they do not choose.
Accused Rights and Victim Interests
The rights of accused persons—to fair trials, to be presumed innocent, to make full answer and defence—sometimes conflict with victim interests. Cross-examination of sexual assault complainants may be traumatic but is essential to testing evidence. Publication bans protect victims but limit public information. Bail release may alarm victims but serves presumption of innocence. These tensions are inherent in a system that must balance multiple legitimate interests.
Some victim advocacy emphasizes reducing accused rights in the name of victim protection. Others argue that strong procedural protections ultimately serve victims by ensuring that convictions are reliable and that innocent people are not punished for crimes they did not commit. Wrongful convictions harm victims too—the real perpetrator remains free, and victims are denied true accountability.
Victims Who Are Also Offenders
The distinction between victims and offenders is often blurrier than rhetoric suggests. Many people in custody have themselves been victims of crime, trauma, or abuse. Indigenous peoples are overrepresented both as victims and as incarcerated offenders—victims of colonial violence, residential schools, and ongoing systemic discrimination. Women in prison frequently have histories of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Recognizing these complexities challenges simple victim-offender dichotomies.
Who Is Heard?
Not all victims are heard equally. High-profile cases involving sympathetic victims—particularly white, middle-class victims of stranger violence—attract media attention and policy response. Victims who are marginalized—Indigenous women, sex workers, homeless individuals, those involved in criminalized activities—may be ignored or blamed. The voices that dominate victim advocacy may not represent those most vulnerable to victimization.
Policy Implications
Victim Consultation
When governments reform criminal justice policy, they routinely claim to consult victims. But consultation processes vary widely in quality. Meaningful consultation involves diverse victim perspectives, not just those already organized and vocal. It includes victims with different relationships to the justice system—those satisfied with outcomes and those who felt revictimized. It takes seriously dissenting views rather than selectively citing support for predetermined positions.
Evidence-Based Approaches
Good policy for victims should be based on evidence about what actually helps victims recover and feel that justice has been done—not assumptions about what victims want or claims by advocacy organizations. Research on victim needs, satisfaction with justice processes, and outcomes of different approaches can inform policy better than political appeals to victim sentiment.
Adequately Resourced Services
Whatever policy direction is chosen, victim services require adequate resources to be effective. Information rights are meaningless without staff to provide information. Participation rights require support for victims to exercise them. Compensation programs need funding to provide meaningful assistance. The gap between rights on paper and rights in practice is often a gap of resources.
Questions for Further Discussion
- How can criminal justice policy development genuinely include diverse victim perspectives rather than selectively invoking victims for political purposes?
- When victim preferences conflict with each other or with broader justice principles, how should those tensions be resolved?
- How can victim services and advocacy better represent marginalized victims whose voices are often excluded from policy debates?
- Should victims have greater formal standing in criminal proceedings, and what would that mean for accused rights and prosecutorial discretion?
- How can restorative justice approaches be offered to victims who want them without pressuring those who prefer traditional processes?