The Third Model of Criminal Process: The Victim Participation Model

Source: (1999) Utah Law Review. 1999: 289.

As Beloof observes, the law now acknowledges the importance of victim participation in the criminal process. This has shaken conventional core assumptions about the criminal process. One core assumption has been that only two value systems compete with each other in the criminal process: the “crime control modelâ€? and the “due process modelâ€? (cf.. Herbert L. Packer’s The Limits of the Criminal Sanction, 1968). Beloof remarks that the values underlying those two models do not accommodate victim participation. Hence a third model is needed – what Beloof calls the “victim participation model.â€? To explicate this model, Beloof looks at values underlying the three models, procedural scenarios viewed within the victim participation model, the language of the three-model approach, and victim participation in the context of procedural stages of the criminal process