Last month Louise Casey resigned as Victims’ Commissioner to take up a new role at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Over a month later, the justice secretary has yet to appoint a new Victims’ Commissioner. Last week, when I asked the justice secretary Ken Clarke how much longer the post would remain empty, he refused to confirm that the post would continue, instead stating that the government ‘are reconsidering — again — the basis on which we make the appointment’.
Clarke’s ambivalence towards this vital role has left victims charities with little confidence that the MoJ sees filling the post quickly as a priority. Reports that elected police commissioners may be made responsible for funding for victim support services on a local level only raise further doubts that a new commissioner will be appointed.
The role of Victims’ Commissioner was established by the previous Labour government with the statutory duty of promoting the interests of victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system and beyond.
As Commissioner for 18 months, Casey worked with a range of charities and organisations to speak up for victims of crime. Undertaking substantial research in a range of areas, meeting and speaking to hundreds of victims of crime, Louise saw first-hand the difficulties that victims and witnesses face and how our justice system currently doesn’t always treat victims as it should. She elevated the position of victims and increased awareness of the problems victims of crime face.
In her last report published in July, Casey highlighted the many emotional, physical and financial problems faced by families who have lost a relative to homicide or manslaughter. Drawing on the experiences of over 400 families, her report provided a series of recommendations as to how the system needs to change to provide bereaved families with the support they deserve.
Her report highlights just why the role of Victims’ Commissioner must continue. While many will empathise with the emotional stress and upset that the loss of a family member causes, the Victims’ Commissioner’s report helped raise awareness about those problems within the system that are not as widely recognised or documented. For example, Casey’s research found that one in five members of bereaved families interviewed became addicted to alcohol, one in four had stopped working permanently and 1 in 4 had to move home. The report also found that ‘from probate, to funerals, to travel to court, to cleaning up the crime scene’ the average cost of homicide to each family was a staggering £37,000.
Through her work, the Victims’ Commissioner showed how support needs to be tailored differently depending on the circumstances of a crime and the victims themselves, providing recommendations as to how this can be achieved. Casey also recommended the implementation of a ‘victim’s law’, providing some statutory safeguard for victims of crime, which has been strongly supported by Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan MP.
In his reply to Casey’s resignation letter, Clarke said that ‘The government is determined to listen to victims of crime and respond to their needs’. But the justice secretary’s lack of a commitment to the future of the Victims’ Commissioner is yet another example of this government’s inability to listen and respond to the needs of victims and witnesses of crime. Instead of building on the work of the previous government and putting victims at the heart of our justice system, the government are undertaking massive cuts to legal aid and have so far refused to compensate British victims of terrorist attacks overseas. Victims should be at the centre of a government’s Justice policy – the Victims’ Commissioner helped do this.
The justice secretary must prove this government’s commitment to victims of crime; appoint a new Victims’ Commissioner as soon as possible and put victims and witnesses of crime at the forefront of the justice system.
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Rob Flello MP is shadow justice minister and Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South
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