Victims of crime

At the turn of the century two Dutch doctorate laureates, Marion Eleanora Ingeborg Brienen and Ernestine Henriëtte Hoegen, pronounced a harsh judgement with regard to Malta's due respect to the rights of crime victims. They asserted that in Malta "the victim's rights to information, compensation and protection are not incorporated into the criminal justice system and are generally not respected by the criminal justice authorities".

Brienen and Hoegen arrived at this disparaging conclusion after studying the position of victims of crime in the framework of criminal law and procedure in 22 European states, which included Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. It is hardly flattering that the researchers discovered that, from among all of these nations, Malta represented "the worst practice".

Brienen and Hoegen conducted their study in order to gauge the implementation of Recommendation No. R. (85) 11 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which deals precisely with the position of victims of crime in the framework of criminal law and procedure. Malta, which has been a member of the Council of Europe since April 29, 1965, was one of the Council's member states involved in the formulation and adoption of the recommendation on June 28, 1985. Though recommendations made by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe do not have a binding legal effect on the member states, they impress a certain moral obligation.

A couple of years after the adoption of Rec. (85) 11, on September 17, 1987 the same committee also adopted yet another recommendation, No. R. (87) 21, which dealt with the assistance to victims and the prevention of victimisation. But Malta still did not comply. The United Nations also gave its thrust by issuing, on November 29, 1985, the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power. But, again, even though Malta has been a UN member since December 1, 1964, and since most UN declarations have no legally binding value, Malta failed to comply.

It seems, however, that this lack of compliance cannot persevere forever, especially in view of Malta's accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. Malta had formally applied for membership in July 1990. On March 15, 2001, the Council of the European Union adopted the Framework Decision on the Standing of Victims in Criminal Proceedings and this is legally binding on all member states, including the 10 that recently joined the bloc.

It must be said that, against the backdrop of this situation, in 2000 the government introduced some legislative amendments. These were set off partly due to the media's and the public's unsympathetic reception to the prison reform programme begun in 1994 and partly due to increasing pressure from other European jurisdictions. The legislative amendments provided that witnesses and victims be offered some protection, including the possibility of being part of protection programmes and (especially for the vulnerable) giving evidence by means of contemporaneous video conferencing.

Other legislation during the same year also provided for the prohibition of discrimination with regard to victims, some form of compensation in very specific cases, the right to be present at proceedings, to engage an advocate or a legal procurator to assist him or her, to examine or cross-examine witnesses, to produce evidence in support of the charge and also the possibility that, on any appeal against sentence, the victim be allowed to make submissions to the court on the appropriate sentence to be passed on the accused.

Significant though these improvements may have been, up to this day no compensation to victims exists in Malta (the same as in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein and Turkey) and victim support (as in Denmark, Iceland, and Spain) is still mainly a grass-roots local or regional service. Furthermore (as in Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey), only certain information is passed on, or only occasionally, to the victim. The police (in Malta as in Iceland) cooperate to a limited extent with certain social services that assist victims of crime.

To cap it all, no national victim support organisation exists in Malta yet. The police headquarters houses a victim support unit of sorts that handles mostly sex offences, including prostitution, and cases of domestic violence. A domestic violence unit, for adults, and a child protective services unit, for children at risk, also exist at the governmental social welfare agency Appogg. The agency also runs a supportline.

The first fully-fledged information and support centre for victims of crime on a national scale - called the Criminal Justice Bureau - is now being proposed by Mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl (of Foundation Daritama). Since a first attempt in 1997 for setting up such a centre failed (as it rested heavily on government funds), it was proposed once more this year, albeit with more success, and completely independent from the government. The centre should be fully operational by next December. Its setting up is being done in close collaboration with Victim Support (UK) monitored by the European Forum for Victim Services.

This should eventually enhance the knowledge of what the impact of crime on victims in Malta really is. The only time that Malta participated in the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) was in 1996. At that moment, the percentage of the population victimised in one year stood at 23.1 per cent. This figure is more of an indication of the prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime than actual prevalence. As it stood, however, the rate made Malta the eighth country with the highest total of crime victims in the world.

Apart from this figure, which is now eight years old, no other reliable rates are known for crime victims in Malta. In the late 1990s a restricted victim survey was carried out by the Department of Criminology at the University of Malta but no follow-up surveys were successively made. Another victim survey was conducted in 2000 on sexual orientation discrimination, but, again, no follow-up surveys were made subsequently.

The Criminal Justice Bureau will work in close collaboration with the government, especially the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, and with all other institutions that somehow relate to victims of crime. The bureau's centre will be at Floriana. It will be run by a specialised staff trained by foreign (British) professionals.

This is a new experience for Malta, and one that Mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl is proud to spearhead.

mfm65@hotmail.com