Carney statement receives mixed reaction

Reaction: There were mixed reactions among legal experts and victims' representatives yesterday to Mr Justice Carney's comments…

Reaction:There were mixed reactions among legal experts and victims' representatives yesterday to Mr Justice Carney's comments, with some believing his intervention had contributed to public debate and others labelling his comments "unhelpful".

There was also some support for the introduction of guidelines for judges when it came to victim impact statements, rather than the introduction of new legislation to govern the area.

Prof Ian O'Donnell, director of UCD's Institute of Criminology, said Mr Justice Carney's comments had raised some important and interesting issues in relation to the role of victims and their families in the judicial process.

He highlighted the "cathartic" value of victim impact statements, but noted that they only come into play at the end of the prosecution process.

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It was his belief that guidelines for judges on the content of victim impact statements would be useful, he said, although he favoured the use of an individual judge's discretion when it came to the interpretation of such statements.

According to Ann Meade of the Support After Homicide voluntary organisation, the introduction of victim impact statements to the judicial process during the 1990s was hugely positive.

"Quite often families have no role in the court process, and yet they see themselves eyeballing the perpetrator in court," she said. "It allows them to say, look, this is what has happened to me and my family . . . it can be instrumental in healing because somebody is listening."

However, victim impact evidence has "quite a specific focus", she said, and there was a need to weigh up a guilty person's right to return to society once he or she had paid their debt.

However, Maeve Ryan of the Crime Victims helpline said it believed that "recent comments" were unhelpful to victims of crime, especially to the people involved in this particular case.

"An ongoing issue which emerges for Crime Victims helpline is that many crime victims do not believe that their needs are met or addressed by the criminal justice system," she said.

Diarmuid Griffin, lecturer in criminology at NUI Galway, said it is a good thing for the judiciary to contribute to public debate. However, he felt Mr Justice Carney's comments relating to the "obsessive grief" of a victim were insensitive. He said he would favour guidelines for the judiciary over new legislation.