Читать книгу Approaching Victimology as social science for Human rights a Spanish perspective онлайн

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The answer to this question has to do with the social contribution to the field of today’s general scientific knowledge. By considering the traditional minor role of victims in the modern criminal justice systems, Victimology tries to offer descriptions and explanations on the actual processes of victimisation and de-victimisation for different victims and contexts to avoid further harms by different social agents or the criminal justice system itself (that harm is mainly called secondary victimisation). Victimology holds a quite modest objective, although a very relevant one because we know that cumulative victimisation (the sum of primary and secondary ones, particularly that one produced by the agencies expected of showing some kind of solidarity), makes it more difficult for (direct and indirect) victims to recover and puts them at risk of further victimisation.

In principle, modern criminal law means that a democratic state, respecting the rights of the accused, concentrates on due process where the rule of law will avoid abuses of the ius puniendi, conceived mainly to decide around questions pertaining to the responsibility and punishment of the accused person. Within that rationale for decisions, the (legitimate) interests of victims –in relation to being heard and repaired– are usually not considered. The fact of actual secondary victimisation (being produced in penal systems that are supposed to help victims) can be assessed when the recently introduced right to “understand and be understood” is considered. This right is proclaimed in the 29/2012/EU Directive on the rights of victims (and not for foreign victims or victims with disabilities, but for any victim). Moreover, the right to be accompanied by any person of the victim’s choice during the penal process is also stated in that Directive because the justice system is considered to be a hostile environment with a high risk of secondary victimisation as empirical research has shown in all countries. The evidence of secondary victimisation, even clearer with victims of violent crimes, has been exposed by the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (2021). This is particularly important because victims of violence usually suffer a greater victim impact.