I just read this article in the paper and it reminded me once again why I feel so strongly about the principle of the state carrying out criminal justice instead of the victims. In some countries, "justice" is meted out to perpetrators by the victim or the family of the victim (e.g. they say whether the person lives or dies in retribution for their crime).

I think this story is another example of the clash between people who think victims should determine and carry out punishments as retribution, and those who think the state should carry it out impartially, weighing the person's risk to society with their possibility of reforming into a productive society member.

I feel so bad for this woman, because she lost her daughter. But that doesn't mean she should be able to decide the fate of the person who killed her daughter 25 years ago.

Here are a few of the things I found problematic:

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In 2004, Dobson was transferred to a fenceless minimum-security prison, in the usual process leading to release. But with the assistance of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, Terri persuaded officials to return him to a medium-security prison.

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Was there a good reason he was transfered to a minimum security prison? Is it possible that, throughout his years in the maximum, and then medium, security prison, he showed enough improvement that he was able to be transfered to minimum security? He did something heinous - 25 years ago - but a lot can change in 25 years. He's not going to be in jail forever. He has to make a transition before his mandatory release date comes along. How is it that an outside observer, who has no access to this person's prison file or psychological reports, and no correctional training, gets to decide the best plan for his reintegration into society?

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"I really believe with my heart and soul that he will kill again," Terri said. "We must save another person's life."

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Well, first of all, her "belief with her heart and soul" isn't a good enough reason to keep someone behind bars. Of course she believes that. She's a victim that this person hurt extremely badly way back when and she's still upset about it. Very understandable. I would be too. I'd hate the guy's guts. And that's why I wouldn't be considered a very credible judge of whether or not he has been rehabilitated.

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As difficult as it was to write their statements, Terri said it's also frustrating that they were required to submit it 30 days in advance so Dobson could read it.

"But we're not allowed to see his material to find out what he wants to say," Terri said.

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This is a basic misunderstanding of what the process is about. The proceedings for his parole isn't about HER, and that's the reason she doesn't get to see the material in advance. His parole hearing isn't a civil suit with her on the other "side". His parole isn't about her at all. It's about the state and about the convict, and whether the state feels the convict can function in society again. I think "victim impact statements" have muddied the waters and led people to believe that parole hearings are about the victim.

Of course she has no right to see what he has to say. Her role as victim is that she has input into the decision. But she has no more right than I do to see his submission to the parole board. Her role is not to act as judge, or to act as the other side of a dispute. Her role is as a witness. Witnesses in trials don't have the right to see all the defence and prosecution evidence. Neither does she have the right to see his submissions to the parole board.

What's really sad is that right-wingers like to use victims like this poor woman to push their agenda. She'll probably get sympathy and supportive words from Harper when she presents her petition to him, and he'll probably score a few political points on it. But it won't help justice in the least. Unless, of course, we support vigilante justice, where the victims decide the fate of the perpetrator. Not my kind of justice system.

[ 09 April 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]

The rule of law long ago supplanted the concepts of revenge and blood-feuds (see Aeschylus, The Oresteia), but still people don't get it. Too often jurors try to put themselves in the position of the victims or their families, and ask themselves "If I were the father of this murder victim, how would I feel about this case?"

The "victims' rights" movement has become so powerful that it has changed the way criminal courts sentence offenders and the prison system treats prisoners, as the quoted article shows. As well it has popularized the idea that criminal law is a quasi-private matter, rather than a matter in which society as a whole has an overriding interest in seeing that justice is done, that offenders are punished and rehabilitated, and that crime in general is denounced and deterred.

It's USian, but it resonates with us:

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One of the hallmarks of our contemporary culture is the curious competition for victim status. As we victimize others around the globe, it is most convenient to consider our American selves as victims. Whites are claiming victimization by affirmative action, males by feminism, Republicans by "the liberal media", the rich by "big government" ­ and so forth, a whole convenient upsidedownism whereby victimization is seen not only as a right, but as a claim on resources. The competition is fierce. Think for a moment about the demands of the Victim's Rights Movement.

First of all, it is now unquestioned that murder victims are more than those killed, but are now legally seen as all friends and family affected by the crime, expanding the test of victimhood to the suffering of those left behind, whose emotional performances seem so persuasive to juries.

For the most part these people insist on vengeance as the only possible "closure" for their distress, a word that has been recently taught them by the political culture and its media-as if the effects of a murder are ever "closed". Protecting the community via life without parole will not serve. Concerning sentencing, what the Victims' Rights Movement has done is to substitute private for public justice, normalizing a sense of entitlement to the death penalty. Only a satisfying personal experience will do, and this now becomes the only adequate gesture for the rest of the community. The goal of the Victims' Rights Movement is to repersonalize criminal justice so that the sentencer must declare an alliance with either the victim or the offender.

Criminal sentencing thus becomes a test of loyalty to one's community ­- a dangerous new path which predisposes toward the punishing needs of the emotionally involved. Rehabilitative strategies are overlooked, rejected as not sufficiently reparative to the new class of victims. And of course capital punishment is the ultimate assertion of righteous indignation, the ultimate form of public victim recognition. No less a legal figure than Janet Reno has raised victim status to absurd heights:

"I draw most of my strength from victims, for they represent America to me: people who will not be put down, people who will not be defeated, people who will rise again and stand again for what is right. You are my heroes and heroines. You are but little lower than the angels."

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"Run it by the victim and get his/her position".

Commonly, "victim impact statements" include all sorts of inadmissible, emotional, and unprovable material.

In one recent case I did, my client hit another guy on the head with a bottle. The victim came home, did some cocaine, and died.

The coroner's report said that he burst a bloodvessel in his brain, a common result of cocaine overdose.

My client pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon, but obviously not to murder, since the Crown could not prove ANY causal relationship between the bottle and the subsequent death.

Nonetheless, the "victim impact statements" included reference to "the permanent loss of our son" due to my client's "murderous behaviour", etc. etc.

Would someone please call these people to the criminal law phone and remind them that once they get convicted they haven't got that many rights? (Even during the trial their right of mobility may be restricted)