Criminal Victimization and Narrative Theory: Victims' Account-Making In Criminal Trials.

Victims of crime are currently enjoying extensive official attention across many legal jurisdictions. As such, there has been renewed interest in the impacts of vicitmization, especially with the wide proliferation of Victim Impact Statements. This paper first draws on developments in our understanding of 'account-making', from the sociological and psychological literatures, to suggest that understanding the impact of crime on victims necessitates a more detailed appreciation of how such experiences impact upon victims' ability to construct life-narratives. The paper then draws on qualitative/ethnographic research recently carried out in England and Wales to illustrate the role of victims' 'account-making' in criminal trials under an adversarial system. Qualitative and quantitative data is produced to illustrate how a victim's story is often changed, amended or replaced through the trial procedure, especially though the process of giving evidence. Hence, the victim's interpretation of the story is substituted for a version (or versions) compiled by other actors within the process. This is problematic, it is submitted, because it denies the victim a chance to derive positive outcomes from the process, and the therapeutic benefits of 'story-telling' for sufferers of many traumas, and for crime victims in particular, are discussed. As such, it is submitted that a victim-centred trial would ensure victims could effectively communicate their own interpretation of their stories to the court. Thus, to put victims 'at the heart' of the system (as the UK government promises) is also to put their stories at the heart of that system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]