Listening to victims of violent crime

A woman, who had been sexually assaulted in a South London park, came to visit me recently at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s National Centre for Personal Centre. She was still gradually putting her life back together after the trauma of the attack. One thing that was clearly not helping her recovery was that, in her view, a series of bureaucratic bungles between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Courts had meant that the perpetrator had remained free and had subsequently attacked other women.

So what is she to do? What is any victim to do in similar circumstances? She doesn’t seem to have very many options. The criminal justice system will carry on doing its best no doubt to bring offenders to justice, but seems unlikely to benefit from her experience. 

In many other walks of public life there are checks and balances to make sure that public bodies learn from their mistakes. There are ombudsmen who can review cases of maladministration, make judgements and recommendations and produce annual reports that can lead to changes in policy and practice. There are ombudsmen for children, local government, pensions, prisoners and the health service. There are even ombudsmen for estate agents and the removals industry.

Yet when someone is sexually assaulted and feels that the legal system as a whole has failed there is no-one who can do anything about it for her. No one is empowered to review the case, highlight any mistakes, and embarrass the criminal justice system into sharpening up its act.

There is a police complaints authority, but its role would seem to be mostly about hearing complaints from people wrongly arrested or shot etc. There is a legal services ombudsman but its role is to hear complaints about poor administration of complaints to the solicitors’ self-regulatory bodies. No one can challenge the Crown Prosecution Service and once something gets to court, the victim can make an impact statement but again has no way of challenging the decision or the process.

Sadly the people who often know the most about what has gone wrong in a case are the ones who are listened to least. They will be dismissed as irrational or emotional yet their vested interest in the outcome will mean that they will very closely follow the twists and turns of the process. If anyone can spot a crack in the criminal justice system it will be someone seeking justice for a crime committed against them.

Most victims I have encountered so far, in my role as Chief Executive of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, just want to make sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to anyone else. When they have done everything they could and the system fails someone else needs to pick that up.

A Victims’ Ombudsman could review cases that have collapses somewhere in the system and work out why. It would need to be independent of the police and the courts and the crown prosecution service. It would be able to pin the blame properly and prevent bureaucratic buck passing. Once a year it could report and recommend changes to the structure to speed up justice and prevent those other miscarriages that leave. That is why I believe we need a Victims’ Ombudsman to speak up for the over 2 million people every year who are victims of a violent crime and the 750 people who are murdered every year. Perhaps then gradually we would see a criminal justice system emerge that had the confidence of the people it is there to serve.