Justice And Recovery For Victimised Children

With its unique human-rights perspective on the study of childhood victimization and an innovative, child-inclusive restorative justice model, this book promises to be a touchstone for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers concerned with children's well-being in the aftermath of crime and violence.

Child Victims explores the range and extent of crimes committed against children, and assesses their impact. The testimony of over two hundred children gives voice, for the first time, to their experiences, their views, and their needs. It examines how children attain the status of 'victims' in the criminal justice system. Drawing on their recent research findings, the authors examine each stage of the legal process that a child encounters, from the initial reporting of the offence, through police investigation, to the trial itself. They contrast the specialist response to victims of child sexual abuse with the experiences of children who are victims of other crimes, thrust into an adult system which takes little account of their needs. Child Victims concludes by examining the role of support services and agencies dealing with child victims, and makes a number of key recommendations for future policy.

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.

Concerned by the high attrition rates for sexual crime and the secondary victimization experienced by victims during their participation in the criminal justice system, this book analyses the extent to which restorative justice can address the justice gap that exists in current justice provision. Building on clinical experience and earlier research on sexual crime the authors engage with the complex dynamics and traumatic impact of sexual crime as a critical starting point for their research and examine whether restorative justice can contribute to a more enhanced justice response. The book presents extensive new data on restorative justice as applied in sexual violence cases across the globe. It engages with feminist concerns regarding the traumatic impact of sexual violence and the power imbalances that characterise these offences, as well as the potential for re-traumatisation and re-victimisation during the judicial process. While there is a risk of coercion of the victim to participate in the process, and manipulation of restorative justice by the offender, restorative justice has the potential to lead to the reprivatisation of sexual crime and ultimately to its decriminalisation. Having examined these topics in detail, the book concludes there is an important role for restorative justice in addressing the justice gap that exists after sexual crime and offers guidance on how this can be achieved.

This book addresses the relationship between restorative justice and children's rights, an issue of increasing relevance to restorative justice theory and practice that has thus far received relatively little attention. Readers will find useful reviews of international human rights documents and of legislation, policy and practices in countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, North America, and Oceania. Each of the chapters demonstrates the compatibility between children's rights and restorative justice. Adopting a rights-based approach is an important means for countries that are interested in further developing restorative justice practices, as it helps restorative processes that are new to the juvenile justice system to gain credibility as well as safeguard young participants' rights in these processes. In countries where restorative justice has been developed, a rights approach can stimulate innovation and applications beyond the child justice system. The book focuses on both needs and rights of children and young people who caused harm or suffered harm. Some chapters also adopt a critical point of view to explore the tensions between rights and restorative justice in relation to colonisation, welfare models, and professional privilege. Studies in Restorative Justice Restorative justice offers a unique approach to crime and victimisation and a change of course from the traditional preoccupation with retribution and transgression of rules in the criminal justice system. This book series aspires to highlight the many accomplishments achieved through the use of restorative justice practices in response to crime and social conflict. It is a collection of groundbreaking theoretical essays on the principles, uses and versatility of restorative justice as well as state-of-the-art empirical research into the implementation of restorative justice practices, experiences in these programmes and evaluation of its impact on victim recovery, reoffending and community capacity building. Contributors include established scholars and promising new scholars.

Each year, child protective services receive reports of child abuse and neglect involving six million children, and many more go unreported. The long-term human and fiscal consequences of child abuse and neglect are not relegated to the victims themselves -- they also impact their families, future relationships, and society. In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) issued the report, Under-standing Child Abuse and Neglect, which provided an overview of the research on child abuse and neglect. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research updates the 1993 report and provides new recommendations to respond to this public health challenge. According to this report, while there has been great progress in child abuse and neglect research, a coordinated, national research infrastructure with high-level federal support needs to be established and implemented immediately. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research recommends an actionable framework to guide and support future child abuse and neglect research. This report calls for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse and neglect research that examines factors related to both children and adults across physical, mental, and behavioral health domains--including those in child welfare, economic support, criminal justice, education, and health care systems--and assesses the needs of a variety of subpopulations. It should also clarify the causal pathways related to child abuse and neglect and, more importantly, assess efforts to interrupt these pathways. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research identifies four areas to look to in developing a coordinated research enterprise: a national strategic plan, a national surveillance system, a new generation of researchers, and changes in the federal and state programmatic and policy response.