Four Models of the Criminal Process

Source: (1999) Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 89(2): 671-684.

In recent decades, much thinking about criminal justice has been influenced by the construction of models. Models are useful tools for coping with the complexity of the criminal process. At the same time, because of that complexity, it is desirable to have multiple models – no one model can reduce the discretionary and humanistic systems of criminal justice to a single truth. In this context, and interacting with two models of the criminal process developed by Herbert Packer in 1964 (the crime control model and the due process model), Kent Roach proposes two new models of the criminal process, both based on different conceptions of victims’ rights. His models are the punitive model of victims’ rights and the non-punitive model of victims’ rights.