Assistance to victims of crime Abstract This master's thesis deals with the assistance to crime victims and it is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the theory of victims and defines its basic terms such as primary and secondary victimization. It also describes the history of the victim and points out the most common stereotypes in the area of attitude to victims. The main part of the thesis describes the legislation. It deals particularly with the Victims of Crime Act which strengthened the victim's position in criminal proceedings and extended their rights. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the definitions of the victim and the vulnerable victim that are contained in the act. Consequently, the purpose is to compare the terms of the victim as a subject of a special care and the injured party as a subject to criminal proceedings. The fourth chapter thoroughly analyzes the six fundamental rights of the victim, which are enshrined in the Victims of Crime Act. The thesis points out that the right to information, which on the other hand means an information duty for the Police of the Czech Republic, law enforcement authorities and entities registered in the register of aid providers, is not pursued sufficiently. The police authority provides victims with the police caution of several...

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The term ‘sexual harassment’ has been treated as key to victim resistance against normalising constructions of unwanted sexual/gendered attention as ‘just sex’ and as a ‘trivial’ part of everyday life. The act of labelling unwanted conduct as sexual harassment has been constituted as an important political step in reframing normalised problematic conduct as gendered violence as well as legitimising recipient access to formalised routes of amelioration. However concerns have been raised that recipients, particularly women, are ‘reluctant’ to use the term ‘sexual harassment’ to describe their experiences and resist unwanted attention using laws and policies designed to deal with this issue. Drawing on resources from discursive, postmodern and feminist approaches, this thesis explores how constructions of the term ‘sexual harassment’ and strategies to deal with it shape, enable and constrain resistances against gendered/sexualised power relations inscribed in manifestations of unwanted attention. It unpacks how discourses of sexual harassment polarise labelling and non-labelling behaviour to produce the former as an act of resistance and the latter as non-resistance. This project moves away from this polarisation to consider boundary construction around the issue of sexual harassment. Through discursive analysis of narratives identified through Q methodological analysis and constructions produced in interview data, this thesis examines how both inclusion and exclusion of relevant issues in multiple understandings of sexual harassment and policy considerations impact challenges that can be made to unwanted conduct. Central to this examination is critical consideration of the operation of gendered power relations within sexual harassment discourses. I pay particular attention to how various constructions of resistance within sexual harassment discourses become embedded in and re(produce) gendered binaries of dominance-subordination. This thesis considers how gendered binaries might be transgressed and destabilised by articulating alternative spaces for the performance of resistance

This is an original non-experimental research conducted in four Geo-Political Zones in Nigeria (West Africa). It surveys opinions of victims of crime and conflicts, and criminal justice professionals with regard to exploring restorative justice as an Alternative Dispute Resolution Model in the country. The findings of this study are relatively in line with other cross-national research and evaluations of restorative justice, which consistently demonstrate that victims of crime are better off after participating in restorative justice programmes compared to the court proceedings (see Strang et al, 2006 for instance). The ‘Afrocentric’ viewpoints contained in the findings are imperative to international practitioners and scholars interested in Peace and Dispute Resolutions in Africa.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the concept of victims of crime from the point of view of Criminology. It is presented within the law studies, so its object also consists of the analysis of the international and national legislation relating to the position and rights of the victim, or more precisely, the aggrieved party in criminal procedure. Firstly, the work presents the concept of Victimology - the scientific discipline about the victims of crime, and it focuses on processes and factors of the victimization. The following chapter is focused on the victimology prevention. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the study of the european legislation regarding the assistance, protection and compensation of victims of crime. Moreover the work describes the victimology legislation of Spain and the Czech Republic and compares the role of the aggrieved party in their criminal justice systems.

This diploma thesis deals with the particularly vulnerable victims of crime and their protection within criminal proceedings. The situation of victim protection is one of the emerging trends in the area of criminal law and because it is a topic that has just recently been addressed by the legal order, there is a room for its assessment and an analysis of problematic areas of concerning legislation. The aim of this thesis is to clarify current legislation regarding the legal position and protection of particularly vulnerable victims of crime that is set out in Act no. 45/2013 Coll., on Victims of Crime. The text is divided into five chapters that are further divided into sub-chapters and the research was done mainly through legislation, explanatory memorandums and concerning comments, specific legal literature and legal journal articles. The first chapter is concerning the historical development, leading to the current legislation regarding the protection of victims of crime within the Czech legal order as well as the international legal order. The second chapter defines important terms for this thesis (victim and particularly vulnerable victim) as stated in the current legislation. It also shortly describes the term criminal proceedings and its specifications in the context of the legal position of...

The aim of this thesis is to provide an information about victimology, its history, on what issues this field of study focuses and what knowledge it provides. Then it is about analysis of whether and how it is possible to use this knowledge for the field of crime prevention and whether it is possible to take more effective preventive measures oriented at the crime victims and what they are. This thesis is divided to introduction, conclusion and six chapters. For introducing the topic into a wider context, the first chapter deals with criminology as the overarching theme of victimology and crime prevention. The second chapter focuses on the criminality, what role victims have in it and what are the possibilities of its control. It defines a concept of crime and its basic characteristics. There is a description of the deference between actual, registered and latent criminality, and what mostly causes its latency. The third chapter provides detailed interpretation of the victimology. The history of this field is briefly described. The principal victimological concepts are defined here, such as victimity, victimization and also crime victims, their typology and differences from the injured party. There are also mentioned the victimology studies and their significance. In conclusion of this chapter...

Contrasting approaches to explaining the social-cognitive contributors to bullying in schools have stressed the importance of a child‘s social goals in determining whether he or she will bully. In spite of this, the social goals of bullies and victims have not been adequately investigated in empirical research. This thesis aimed to address this issue by investigating the social goals associated with bullying/victimisation, determining whether these goals were able to predict bullying/victimisation even after other social processing biases and theory of mind had been taken into account, and considering the influence social goals have on children‘s response to provocation. In a series of six studies, 583 children from Primary schools in the UK completed several measures aimed at assessing their engagement in behaviours related to bullying and being victimised, their social goals (both as general interpersonal goals and also specific to hypothetical social scenarios), and other social-cognitive factors (including theory of mind). Although the pattern of results across studies was not always uniform, there was a general trend for bullying in boys to be associated with situation-specific goals that protected their physical dominance within their peer group, while bullying in girls was better predicted by an overall concern for maintaining an image of popularity. Interestingly, victimisation in boys was predicted by an inappropriate concern for others‘ feelings in certain scenarios, while victimisation in girls was associated with a low level of concern for behaving prosocially. Importantly, these kinds of social goals remained predictive of bullying and victimisation even after controlling for variance accounted for by theory of mind and other social information processing biases. Finally, social goals were found to mediate the relationship between bullying/victimisation and aggressive/submissive response strategies. Findings are discussed in relation to the existing literature as well as to their potential impact on intervention strategies.

Secondary victims of traumatic violent crimes are subject to continuing the process of fighting for the loved ones they have lost. Once the offender is incarcerated, such victims may still have to face the process of parole if the offender has been granted a possibility of parole after years served. There is a gap in the literature and a need for research in the area of lived experiences for secondary victims as they progress through the parole process. For this study, a phenomenological study was utilized with 10 secondary victim participants. Participants were interviewed questions via telephone and the data were clustered and then thematically analyzed, revealing that participants had feelings of fear, depression, and being forgotten. The participants also stated a lack of aid and knowledge during the parole process and expressed their experiences of difficulty during the parole process. The study found a need for victim aid and resources. The study has positive social implication through research examining the need for victim aid and education for the criminal justice system.

A presente pesquisa objetiva identificar a natureza jurídica do instituto do consentimento do ofendido para o direito penal brasileiro atual, evidenciando o papel da vítima. Para tanto, inicia-se a pesquisa com uma análise sobre o ofendido, estabelecendo sua evolução histórica, seu conceito atual, bem como os conceitos de vitimologia e vitimodogmática. Logo, aborda-se o consentimento propriamente dito, determinando seu histórico, seu conceito, seu objeto (bem jurídico disponível), seus requisitos e diferenças em relação à autocolocação da vítima em risco. Em seguida, verifica-se o estado atual da questão da natureza jurídica do consentimento. Parte-se da legislação brasileira e do entendimento doutrinário atual. Em razão da predominância do entendimento pela causa de justificação, os fundamentos histórico dogmáticos do conceito material de antijuridicidade são verificados. Ainda no campo da análise da natureza jurídica, fundamental a análise da questão da tipicidade (formal e substancial) pressuposto da antijuridicidade. Assim, analisa-se o consentimento do ofendido como causa de exclusão da tipicidade material. Tendo em vista a teoria unitária, busca-se afastar a diferenciação entre o consentimento e o acordo. Na sequência, trata-se do direito comparado. Assim, torna-se possível a análise do consentimento do ofendido no direito penal brasileiro, tendo em vista a legislação penal em vigor. / This paper aims to identify the legal institute of the need for the offended persons consent for the current Brazilian criminal law, highlighting the role of the victim. To this effect, the study begins with an analysis of victims rights, establishing their historical evolution, the current concept, as well as the concepts of victimology and victim dogmatism (a branch that studies the behavior of crime victims and their contribution to the occurrence of the event, as well as the repercussion of that participation on setting the penalty imposed on the perpetrator). Then it examines consent itself, determining its history, concept, object (alienable rights), the requirements and differences in relation to the victims self-exposure to risk. Next it describes the current state of the legal nature of the consent question based on Brazilian legislation and the interpretation of legal scholars. Because of the predominant position regarding cause for justification, dogmatic historical foundations of the material concept of material illegality are addressed. Still in the field of the legal nature, it is fundamental to analyze the question of classification of the crime (formal and substantive), which is a presupposition for illegality. Therefore, consent of the offended person is analyzed as cause to exclude the classification of the act as a crime. Based on unitary theory, I argue against the distinction between consent and concurrence. Finally, the matter is examined from the perspective of comparative law, to analyze the issue of victims consent in current Brazilian criminal law.