En route without a steering wheel – a victim-centred mapping of power in the criminal justice system

Abstract

Victims of sexual assault who turn to the criminal justice system for help often end up with negative experiences or even secondary trauma. While previous research has highlighted the challenges victims face, it tends to focus on individual interactions and rarely takes a holistic, victim-centred view of the process. Furthermore, it often highlights the actions of other stakeholders, rather than exploring the victim's ability to act. This means that systemic structures that influence the victim's experience and their ability to shape that experience can go unnoticed.

Using a human-centred design approach, journey mapping, we map the victim's experience, looking at the case of the Dutch criminal justice system. The journey map shows what interactions and non-interactions the victim encounters. We then analyse the map using a feminist theory of power, the Matrix of Domination, to explore how power impacts the victim's experience, both on an interpersonal and structural level.

In our study, we find that victims initially hold power, but that they lose it almost entirely when a case is filed. This lack of power results in the victim not having control of their journey in the criminal justice system, and results in different types of harm. We argue that if we want to improve victims' experiences, mapping power allows us to move beyond individual interactions and focus on systemic, structural changes.