Victims of crime with disabilities in Ireland
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758014537149 |
| Author | Shane Kilcommins,Mary Donnelly |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Victims of crime with
disabilities in Ireland:
Hidden casualties in
the ‘vision of victim
as everyman’
Shane Kilcommins
University of Limerick, Ireland
Mary Donnelly
University College Cork, Ireland
Abstract
In recent decades, criminal justice systems are, at least partially, being reconstructed as they
demonstrate an increased sensitivity to the needs and concerns of victims of crime. As part of this,
a new cultural theme of the victim as ‘Everyman’ is emerging. However, these generalizing ten-
dencies conceal the multiplicity of experiences of victimhood and of interactions with the criminal
justice system. As a result, certain categories of victim are rendered invisible and unable to share in
the benefits of this more inclusive approach. One such category is victims with disabilities, and in
particular those with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities. The purpose of this article is to write
victims with disabilities in Ireland into the victim story more generally. Against a background of
greater recognition of victims in Irish law and policy, it demonstrates the variety of ways in which
victims with disabilities do not fit more orthodox, ‘everyman’, conceptions of victimization. It
identifies the range of ways in which the outsider status of victims of crime with disabilities con-
tinues to be maintained in criminal justice policy, the adversarial process, the language employed by
the criminal law, and service provision and identifies ways in which the failure to address the
marginalization of victims with disabilities is a breach of international human rights obligations.
Keywords
adversarialism, marginalization, victims with disabilities
Corresponding author:
Professor Shane Kilcommins, School of Law, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
Email: shane.kilcommins@ul.ie
International Review of Victimology
2014, Vol. 20(3) 305–325
ªThe Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758014537149
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305
Introduction
Eighteenth century justice emphasized at every turn the importance of the victim. Crime conflicts
remained very much the property of the parties personally affected, with ‘negotiation and informal
sanction (rather than formal prosecution) the norm’ (King, 2000: 22). When formal justice was
invoked, it relied heavily on the victim who monopolized investigative and prosecutorial functions.
In contrast,the story of criminal justice for muchof the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies might best
be told as the rise of institutionalized justice whereby the state gradually colonizedownership of the
wrongfulnessof criminal wrongdoing. This entailedthe steady development of an ‘equalityof arms’
framework, designed to offset the power vested in an increasingly Leviathan state and offer some
protections and safeguards to those accused of crime. Justice increasingly became an institutiona-
lized, rule-bound reality, and decreasingly dependent on the victim’s energy, needs, experiences
or perspective as regards the alleged crime. This new institutional pattern quickly transcended the
victim’s interaction with the crime conflict and re-shaped how it was presented, addressed, legiti-
mated and concluded. As a consequence,the victim was displaced, confined tothe peripheral status
of reporting crime and providing testimonial evidence in court, if needed (Rock, 2004: 331354).
In the last four decades, however, victims are again returning to centre stage in western juris-
dictions. Justice systems are partially being reconstructed as they demonstrate an increased sensi-
tivity to the needs and concerns of victims of crime. As Garland (2001: 11) has noted: ‘The victim
is no longer an unfortunate citizen who has been on the receiving end of a criminal harm, and
whose concerns are subsumed within the public interest ... The victim is now ...a much more rep-
resentative character, whose experience is taken to be collective, rather than individual and atypi-
cal’.
1
This ‘vision of the victim as Everyman’ is part of a ‘new cultural theme’, a ‘new collective
meaning of victimhood’ (2001: 12) that is increasingly represented in social, political and media
circles. The pattern of the representation of the victim is broadly accurate as it relates to Ireland.
Victims of crime have moved to the centre of the Irish criminal process from the periphery, and are
now re-emerging again as important stakeholders.
Nevertheless this ‘Everyman’ account of the ways in which the justice system currently depicts
and signifies the victim is not without its problems, in particular its tendency to engage in a form of
essentialism that oversimplifies the complexities involved. The general constituency of victim-
hood as ‘Everyman’ as constructed under this account often reveals itself as a narrow caste of indi-
viduals heterosexual, white, mainly urban, often female that focuses on a relatively restricted
band of offences such as domestic violence, sexual offences and homicide (Hoyle, 2012: 398;
Kilcommins et al., 2010: v). These generalizing tendencies conceal the multiplicity of experi-
ences of victimhood and the multiplicity of interactions with the criminal justice process. The
result is that certain categories of victim are rendered invisible and unable to share in the benefits
of the more inclusive approach. One such category is victims with disabilities. Although such
individuals are very likely to be conferred with ‘the complete and legitimate status’ of being
‘ideal victims’ in Irish social, media and political networks given their perceived vulnerability
and blamelessness (Christie, 1986: 18), this status does not readily transpose itself into the more
limiting structural framework of the Irish justice system. The values that facilitate the construc-
tion of an ‘ideal victim’ at the initial (and very broad discretionary) labelling stage following
the commission of a crime such as perceived vulnerability and weakness in relation to the
offender can work in the opposite direction as one moves further into a formalized, insti-
tutionalized justice network governed by rules (evidence and criminal procedure), rights (the
right to cross-examine, for example) and principles (such as the principle of orality).
306 International Review of Victimology 20(3)
306
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