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ABSTRACT
In recent years, victimological research has turned toward the study of victims’ perceptions or meanings of justice, challenging the traditional and prevailing understanding of the retributivist approach; this shift in focus locates the present study. Its goal was to assess victims’ justice interests and recognize its complexity by identifying victim and crime-related variables that could play a role in shaping those interests. For this propose, a quantitative approach was adopted and victims’ justice interests were measured through a scale created for this research. Victim and crime characteristics, together with psychological constructs related to victims’ recovery, were considered key variables. The study took place in Santiago of Chile and involved 133 direct and indirect victims of serious crimes - in all cases, criminal investigation processes were ongoing. Descriptive, comparative and correlational analyses were carried out. Once key variables were identified, predictive models for each justice interest were developed using multiple linear regression. Our results illustrated that type of crime, gender, prior victimization and recovery-related psychological variables played a role in shaping and predicting victims’ justice interests. The paper concludes discussing the contribution of these findings to research and public policy.
Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to the participants in our study for their collaboration and to the organisations that offered their support to carry out this project, in particular, the Programa Apoyo a Victimas and Centros de Víctimas from Corporación de Asistencia Judicial Metropolitana.
This work was funded by the Grant Fondecyt de Iniciación N°11160741, Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, Chile.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. In this paper, we use the concept of “justice interests”, emphasizing the idea of victims as citizens that pursue justice (Daly, Citation2017). However, we use both concepts – needs and interests- as exchangeable notions, depending on the author cited.
2. In McGlynn and Westmarland’s (Citation2019), participation is an element of voice.
3. Based on Toews (Citation2006).
4. This study was approved by the Scientific Ethics Committee of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, ID 170512005.
5. The only type of case excluded was intimate partner violence.
6. In Chile, no restorative justice is available for adult offenders and serious crimes, thus participants of this research were only exposed to a traditional adversarial criminal justice procedure.
7. Even though traffic accidents are not strictly considered “crimes” in Chilean legislation, they are called “quasi-crimes” as they might imply serious consequences even when the perpetrator did not have the direct intention to cause harm. In our study, traffic accidents were only considered when they caused death or serious, long-term injuries.
8. Co-victims refer to indirect victims, that is, “individuals who have familial connections with the victim and are thus indirectly victimized” (Connolly & Gordon, Citation2015, p. 494).
9. IJIV Scale was applied in Spanish; this version is available upon request.
10. The reader should remember that in this case victims were only exposed to an adversarial traditional criminal justice system. Other justice mechanisms were not assessed on this occasion.
11. Other studies have concluded the contrary (e.g., Applegate et al., Citation2002; Spiranovic et al., Citation2012)
12. Female victims’ needs, expectations and experiences of justice have been particularly studied in relation to intimate partner violence or sexual violence. See, for example, Mulvihill et al. (Citation2018).
13. We must remind, however, that victimization and punitiveness have not been associated in the literature (e.g., Aertsen, Citation2010; Mattinson & Mirrlees-Black, Citation2000; Van Kesteren & Van Dijk, Citation2010).