Forgotten victims

Criminologist Kim Ramsay is once again warning that victims of crime are becoming the forgotten players in the criminal justice system.

During a Man Talk panel discussion hosted by the Cave Hill Wesleyan Men Ministry on Tuesday night, she charged that there is a glaring absence in the balance of victim and offender and she believed that the system seems skewed toward the offender.

Ramsay referenced instances of sentencing where offenders are given discounts for time spent on remand, for guilty pleas, etc. What’s more, in the criminal justice system, legal aid is provided to offenders if they cannot afford their own personal counsel.

“But what is there for victims?” she asked.

“Where can victims and victims’ families go to for aid? When you lose the breadwinner in the family, a loved one who is taking care of the house financially there is no recourse. That is the financial side of it but there is the psychological side, there is the social side. . . .  People continue to suffer and suffer for years and years after their victimization. What about them? Nobody is there for them. We need to play a more integral role in the lives of these victims.

“. . . It always seems like everything is stacked against the victim and for the perpetrator. And I believe that the victim’s voice becomes more distant in the whole process,” Ramsay maintained.

The senior researcher in the Criminal Justice Research and Planning Unit argued that on the psychological side, instances where victims think that justice was not served or that they got no satisfaction can potentially cause “secondary victimization”. This is where victims feel like they are going through the victimization process all over again. Ramsay therefore encouraged practitioners in the judicial system to be more humane when dealing with persons who are victims of crime.

“You have to understand that people’s emotions are raw. I think some police, for instance, need a little more counselling and the victim support unit probably need to do some more training with police and so on but understand that when you are victimized, you are not rational, you’re emotional. And yes, the police have their job to do, yes, defense lawyers etc. but we have to understand that this person did not ask to be victimized we have to be more understanding. I know a lot of training is going on in terms of that but there is still a lot more work to be done,” she said.

Ramsay said she would like to see the introduction of complainants being allowed to make victim impacts statements directly to the accused in person at court sentencings. Ramsay believed that this would assist the healing process.

“I believe and I’ve been saying this for years that we need to really put victims at the fore of sentencing. Things like when the offender is coming out of prison. I know somebody whose mother was murdered and she did not know that the person got bail. She said she just happened to turn a corner and she was face-to-face with one of the perpetrators. Can you imagine the psychological harm that this can do to her?

“I am reminding people that we get caught up in all the legal jargon but at the end of the day a family is suffering and they have not received any closure. . . . We don’t hear the stories of families which have been in counselling for 20 and 30 years because they have not received that closure that they so desperately needed. We don’t know about the families who have suffered from non-communicable diseases brought on because of stress. We don’t know about the families that will sit down and cry every single night because they have not been able to say that last goodbye, to their family members and we can go on and on about the many stories. But we hear about the person who ‘he had a guilty plea, he doesn’t have a lawyer’. We don’t hear about the other side of the serious and long-term impact of criminal victimization on the remaining family members,” Ramsay stressed.

Other panelists at the discussion included Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes; criminal investigator in the Barbados Police Service acting Inspector Peter Dawson; former prison inmate, Mark Headley; and Head of Inmate Rehab, Dodds Prison, Anthony Holder. (KC)