A jurisdiction experiments with allowing victims to address offenders directly in restorative justice conferences, bypassing traditional prosecution entirely for certain crimes. Another establishes victim advocates with power to challenge prosecutorial decisions in court. A province measures justice system success not by conviction rates but by victim satisfaction surveys. Some victims report feeling heard and healing for the first time, while others feel pressured to forgive or participate in processes they find retraumatizing. The movement toward victim-centered justice promises to transform a system historically built around state versus accused, but whether that transformation strengthens justice or undermines its foundations depends on how far the shift goes and whose vision of victim-centeredness prevails.
The Case for Transformative Victim Empowerment
Advocates argue that incremental victims' rights reforms have not gone far enough. True victim-centered justice requires systemic transformation: giving victims meaningful participation in decisions about prosecution and sentencing, expanding restorative justice as a default option rather than rare alternative, measuring system performance by victim recovery and satisfaction rather than conviction rates and sentence lengths, and funding comprehensive support services as core justice functions rather than afterthoughts. Restorative processes that bring victims and offenders together to discuss harm and accountability show promising results: victims report greater satisfaction, offenders show lower recidivism, and both experience the process as more meaningful than traditional prosecution. From this view, the adversarial system serves lawyers and institutions more than it serves those harmed by crime. A victim-centered future means redesigning processes around victim needs, expanding their voice and choice, and recognizing that justice for victims may look different from punishment of offenders.
The Case for Balanced Reform and Institutional Integrity
Others caution that centering victims risks losing sight of justice's broader purposes. The state prosecutes crimes not just because individuals were harmed but because social order was violated. Victims' interests and society's interests sometimes align but often diverge. Some victims want extreme punishment while offenses merit lenient sentences. Others want no prosecution while the offense threatens public safety. Giving victims control over these decisions creates inconsistency, with similar crimes treated vastly differently based on individual victim preferences. Restorative justice works for motivated participants with certain offenses but cannot handle the full range of criminal behavior. Moreover, expanding victim participation risks retraumatizing them through processes that demand emotional labor or face-to-face encounters with those who harmed them. From this perspective, supporting victims and centering their experience are valuable but must remain compatible with fair process, public safety, and equal treatment under law. Reform should enhance victim support within existing structures, not rebuild the system around potentially conflicting individual preferences.
The Measurement Problem
Different visions of victim-centered justice use different metrics of success. Traditional measures focus on prosecution outcomes: charges filed, convictions secured, sentences imposed. Victim-centered approaches suggest measuring satisfaction, perceived fairness, psychological recovery, and whether victims feel heard. But these metrics can conflict. A victim might feel satisfied with a restorative process that does not adequately hold a dangerous offender accountable. Another might feel the traditional process provided justice even though it was grueling. Still others might feel no process serves them well. Without agreement on what success looks like, reforms pull in contradictory directions, with each side claiming its approach serves victims better.
The Question
If victims currently lack meaningful voice in justice processes, does centering their experience require giving them control over outcomes, or simply ensuring they are heard while decisions remain institutional? Can restorative justice scale from carefully selected cases to broader application without losing what makes it effective? And when individual victim needs conflict with consistent application of law, systemic efficiency, or public safety, whose interests should a victim-centered justice system prioritize?