The Victim in the Irish Criminal Process. By Shane Kilcommins, Susan Leahy, Kathleen Moore-Walsh and Eimear Spain

• Author: Conor Hanly
• Position: NUI Galway
• Pages: 133-134

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[2019] Irish Judicial Studies Journal Vol 3

BOOK REVIEW

Shane Kilcommins, Susan Leahy, Kathleen Moore-Walsh & Eimear

Spain, The Victim in the Irish Criminal Process (Manchester

University Press 2018), ISBN 978 1 5261 0638 1, 171p.

Conor Hanly, NUI Galway.

When she introduced what became the Criminal Justice (Victims of Crime) Act 2017 into

the Oireachtas, Frances Fitzgerald, the Minister for Justice and Equality, suggested that

the victim should be at the heart of the criminal process in Ireland. This has become a

common rhetorical refrain, the precise meaning of which is rarely explained. On a literal

level, the rhetoric is plainly untrue: the heart of the criminal process is the investigation

and prosecution of criminal acts, in which the victim formally remains merely a witness.

But it is true that, from the 1980s, victims’ needs and concerns have received greater

attention from lawmakers and executive agencies. The purpose of this new book is to

provide an accessible overview of the victim’s current standing in the criminal process,

and to show how this standing has changed over time.

The first chapter is historical, and shows how the position of crime victims was gradually

altered during the later eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries. For centuries,

criminal justice was largely a private matter, being dependent on the initiative of private

parties, especially the victim. As the State began to professionalise the criminal justice

system, through the advent of modern policing and public prosecution, the victim found

herself being pushed from the centre of the process to its margins. This chapter covers a

lot of ground in some twenty pages, but still conveys the context in which these changes

took place and the mechanisms by which it was accomplished. Usefully, it also notes

some of the differences that existed between the jurisdictions that formed the United

Kingdom; Public prosecution, for example, became the norm in Scotland and Ireland

long before the same occurred in England.

Chapter 2 shows how the criminal process slowly rediscovered the victim. The chapter

demonstrates the importance of the confluence of four developments: the advent of

victimology, the victims’ movement, the growing reach and influence of human rights

instruments and case law, and the politicisation of law and order. Each of these

developments is traced in some detail, with references for those interested in following

up. This chapter leads nicely into the third chapter which focuses on the measures that

the criminal justice system has implemented to improve the lot of victims: use of video-

link testimony, intermediaries, pre-trial statements. Other measures allow the victim

some degree of inclusion into the process, such as the use of victim impact statements.

This chapter takes the reader on a tour of these measures, and includes a detailed

consideration of the EU Victims’ Directive, the Criminal Justice (Victims of Crime) Act

and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act, the latter two enacted in 2017. These three

measures will underpin the treatment of victims in Irish law for many years into the

future. In Chapter 5, when considering ongoing challenges for the criminal justice

system, the authors correctly point out that the focus of the Irish legislation is on victims

who have engaged with the criminal justice system, especially the Gardaí [p.113]; the

position of victims who have not done so, or who have engaged with agencies other then

the Gardaí is unclear.