Underrepresentation In Criminal Justice

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Victims of crime have been known to be underrepresented in Australian criminal justice processes (Baldry et al. 2013). In order to resolve this issue a number of reforms have been introduced with the aim to allow the victim greater involvement in criminal justice processes; for example the introduction of the Victim Impact Statement (VIS) allows victims an opportunity to be included in court processes (Israel 2017, p. 525). However, this essay argues that some victims of crime, specifically victims with intellectual disabilities, are still underrepresented during criminal justice processes despite these reforms. One example of such underrepresentation is shown through the current policy initiative of cross-examination; this process is not effective …show more content…

This essay focuses on one criminal justice process, cross-examination, to allow a narrower scope of evaluation on the contemporary approaches aimed at repairing this particular issue. In 2014, Bowden, Henning and Plater approached the practice of cross-examination and stated that ‘it could lead to unreliable evidence and further trauma to the victim’ (p.539); the unreliable evidence could be due to a number of reasons but mostly from the victim’s possible unintentional misunderstanding of questions, misremembering of events after the incident and also heightened anxiety from the experiences of being involved with the criminal justice system (pp. 540-541). Additionally, Bowden, Henning and Plater suggest that direct cross-examination become replaced with video recording ahead of time conducted by a third party for victims with intellectual disabilities (2014, p. 539). Furthermore, Nair, advocates that traditional cross-examination question/answer formats are usually confusing and intimidating to intellectually disabled witnesses and therefore courtrooms should allow ‘vulnerable witnesses’ to give evidence in narrative form (2010). These developing contemporary approaches to address cross-examination issues largely consist around methods to reduce the victim’s possible misunderstanding, heightened anxiety and misremembering of events …show more content…

295).
While there were some negative responses to pre-recording the cross-examinations of victims, such as difficulty for the jury to maintain concentration during a long video and also the inability for the jury to see the defendant’s immediate reaction during cross-examination, the overall response to the test from the people involved was positive. Nair’s suggestion of allowing victims to use a narrative form is based upon evidence from a study by Agnew and Powell (2004, p. 290) that found some victims that were children with or without intellectual disabilities, give more accurate evidence when in a narrative form (2010, p. 482-483). While there is limited evidence on the use of this approach, it would eliminate the possibility of the victim misunderstanding the questions during cross-examination; a factor which is usually caused by the formal dialog used by legal professionals (Garbett 2017). The effectiveness of these approaches is shown through the evidence that they minimise the amount of anxiety felt by victims with intellectual disabilities, reduce the chances of misremembering

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