Source: (2003) Paper submitted for the XIth International Symposium on Victimology. 13-18 July 2003, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Downloaded 21 August 2003.
Tracey Booth begins by pointing to developments in the last two decades that have given victims integral roles in courtroom procedures and sentencing practices. This contrasts with the marginalization and even exclusion of victims in the common practice of the adversarial criminal justice system. Since 1989 Australian state governments have enacted legislative reforms that empower victims of crime. For example, family victims (relations or close friends of deceased victims) now have a limited right to participate at the sentencing stage. In this paper, Booth argues from research that the involvement of family victims in sentencing leads to a distinct humanization of the sentencing process for family victims.
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