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45 Monash U. L. Rev. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/monash45 and id is 1 raw text is: 





           DEVELOPMENT OF THE OFFICE OF
    COMMISSIONER OF VICTIMS' RIGHTS AS AN
    APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO IMPROVING THE
    EXPERIENCES OF VICTIMS IN THE CRIMINAL
    JUSTICE SYSTEM: INTEGRITY, ACCESS AND
            JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME


  TYRONE KIRCHENGAST*, MARY ILIADIS** AND MICHAEL O'CONNELL***


     Meeting the needs of crime victims has emerged as a significant 21
     century concern. In the Australian context, various commissions of
     inquiry have recently considered how the interests of victims may be
     maintained in a system based on adversarial exchange between the
     accused and the state. Consensus has emerged around the further
     development of existing charters of victims' rights as the framework
     through which victims' interests may be secured. Importantly,
     reform ofexisting charter rights and the office that administers such
     charters, the Office of Commissioner of Victims' Rights, provides a
     means of addressing the recommendations of the various inquiries
     in a way that supports the participatory needs of victims, while
     maintaining the independence and integrity of criminal justice
     processes that provide due process to the accused. This article
     considers the ways in which the Office of Commissioner of Victims'
     Rights may be further developed to provide for the needs of victims
     against the need to maintain the adversarial character of criminal
     justice, and due process rights of the accused.




                         I INTRODUCTION

Recent inquiries including those of the Victorian Law Reform Commission
('VLRC')' and Royal Commissions into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual

*  Associate Professor, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, NSW 2006. The authors thank the
   anonymous reviewers for their constructive remarks.
** Lecturer, Department of Criminology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, VIC
   3125.
*** Commissioner for Victims' Rights for South Australia (2006-18), Government of South Australia, SA 5000.
1 Victorian Law Reform Commission, The Role of Victims of Crime in the Criminal Trial Process (Report No
   34, August 2016) ('The Role of Victims of Crime').

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