NCJ Number
163035
Journal
European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Volume: 3 Issue: 3 Dated: (1995) Pages: 230-240
Date Published
1995
Length
11 pages
Annotation
After reviewing the history of orientation toward victims in western European countries' criminal justice systems, this paper discusses the legal position of the victim in criminal justice in the former socialist states of eastern Europe as well as victim- offender mediation in the former socialist states within extrajudicial mechanisms.
Abstract
The penal legislation of the former socialist states gave the crime victim a minor role in the criminal justice system. Despite proclaimed attempts to mobilize citizens in the pursuit of governmental goals, official control of the criminal justice process was tight. Lenin's appeal to direct popular participation in the administration of justice on the basis of the revolutionary sense of justice for the working class enabled the Soviet state to secure political power and also provided an ideological basis for the assumption that in the communist society a new form of social administration would appear. Marxist concepts fostered a process of transferring traditional state criminal justice functions to social institutions, which then dispensed justice outside formal criminal procedure. The first nonmilitary "comrade courts" in Russia were established in 1919; in 1932 there were over 12,000 such organs in factories and 45,000 in villages. Sanctions they were entitled to impose were the so-called measures of social pressure: public apology to the victim or the collective, a comradely warning, social censure, a social reprimand, demotion, compensation, deprivation of certain material advantages, and a fine up to a specified limit. The purpose of the social courts, however, was not to heal conflicts between offenders and victims, but rather to align individuals or groups with state policy on the function of the law in the socialist transition and to exert pressure on violators to change their ways. Ultimately, then, these courts became tools for the state to promulgate compliance with state policy. With such memories of the socialist tradition of social courts, there is little enthusiasm among law reformers in current central and eastern European countries for many forms of extrajudicial settlement between offenders and victims. 54 footnotes