Victims let down by justice system

Stuff reports:

Her comments come as the preliminary results of a victims survey reveal the system was “letting victims down”.
More than 600 people participated in the survey that asked victims of crime for their their views on the criminal justice system, what works and what doesn’t, and how they believe it can be improved.
Fifty seven per cent of people said that they either had a poor or very poor overall experience of the system, while 22 per cent said they had an average experience.

That’s an appalling result. Not entirely surprising as the system is based on the alleged criminal, not the victim.

Some of the experiences will be because of light sentences or even getting off. But often it is other stuff such as their sentencing comments being censored because they are too inflammatory etc.

Meanwhile, new research released by Victim Support showed the majority of serious crime victims lack faith in the justice system, felt justice was not served in their case and commonly reported they felt they had no genuine voice in the justice system.
About 59 per cent of victims interviewed told researchers they had no faith in the justice system and 68 per cent felt justice had not been served in their case.
This was despite 73 per cent of cases in the study resulting in a guilty verdict and 52 per cent resulting in imprisonment of the offender.

These figures will only get worse if we move to a catch and release policy in order to artificially keep prison numbers down.