NCJ Number
155645
Date Published
1990
Length
459 pages
Annotation
This book examines the evolution of government policies toward crime victims in England and Wales.
Abstract
The author first describes the Home Office, which is the center and arbiter of the criminal justice system. The Home Office shaped the arena in which actions related to crime-victim services unfolded. The discussion then turns to two early and formative campaigns to aid crime victims, one leading to the successful formation of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme in 1964, and the other, a National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders Victims-Offenders Discussion Group; the latter gave birth to two progeny; one was the National Victims Association, a group that lobbied and experimented with projects for victims in the early 1970's; and the other was a victims support scheme whose structure and methods consisted in part of an answer to the failings of an advice center started and then closed by the National Victims Association. Two chapters discuss how that victims support scheme became the prototype and nucleus of a great network of schemes that coalesced into the National Association of Victims Support Schemes in 1980. Another chapter returns to a discussion of the Home Office, as it reconstructs the way in which it viewed and received these achievements. The concluding chapter discusses how the National Association sought funding from the Home Office and how the Home Office eventually decided to respond in 1986 by awarding millions of pounds and major recognition to a new institution in the criminal justice system. Subject index and chapter footnotes