Critical Analysis of Survivor's Justice: Policy and Strategy Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the 'Survivor's Justice' document by Victim Support, a charity in England and Wales. The report delves into the aims and mission of the Victim Support organization, focusing on its role in providing emotional and practical support to survivors of domestic abuse. It discusses the charity's scope of work in service provision, highlighting its efforts to address issues related to domestic violence and abuse, and its role in research, campaigning, and policy-making. The report further examines the social problems and objectives highlighted in the 'Survivor's Justice' document, including barriers to reporting abuse, police response to victims, and access to compensation. It analyzes the document's principal arguments and findings, emphasizing the need for improved communication, training for police officers, and strengthened protection orders. The report concludes by underscoring the importance of collaborative efforts between charity organizations and government authorities to reduce domestic abuse and violence.

POLICY AND
STRATEGY

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY.......................................................................................................................1
Aim and mission of the Victim charity organization.......................................................1
Discussion over the charity scope of work in relation to service provision...................2
Role of charities in researching, campaigning and policy making................................3
Discussion over the social problem and objectives highlighted in Survivor's Justice
document.......................................................................................................................3
Survivor's Justice document principle arguments and findings....................................4
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES..................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Policy papers are defined as the part of the research which usually concentrates
on policy issues and giving proper guidance for making policies (Hagemann and
Emerson, 2020). A white paper in which the government presents the policy
preferences before implementing the laws, that are made for tackling social issues
(.McGuire, Evans and Kane, 2021). Policy documents are formal documents which
are made by non government organizations (Winning and et.al 2021). Their aim is to
develop awareness. Policy papers aim to define the contract between the citizens and
state, in which the government protects the rights of humans and provides them all with
services to increase their welfare (Kelley, Zhang and O’Neal, 2021). Social policies aim
to treat people with equity, fairness and dignity in system(Bilali and Vollhardt, 2019).
Collectivism refers to the idea that people of a society think for the good or welfare of
the society rather than the individual (Singh, 2019). In individualism theory an individual
only cares about their independence and self actualization (Merandi and et.al 2017).
Policy papers and policy documents are mainly concerned about welfare
principles that centre around improving the health of the public including their mental,
physical and social health (Gomes, 2021). The chosen document for this report is
“Survivor's Justice” by Victim support, a independent charity located in England and
Wales (Wood and et.al 2020).
MAIN BODY
Aim and mission of the Victim charity organization
Victim charity organization aims to provide emotional and empirical support to
the victims or survivors of the domestic abuse cause. Main aim of the agency is to
support the victims of the crime and the person who are sufferer of the traumatic
incidents across England and Wales. They are non-governmental organization, their
mission is to work in collaboration with the cops, communities in order to help the
victims of tragedies to restore their confidence. Also, to improve the quality life of the
victim, along with this their aim is also to prevent the crimes in the society (McCoy and
et.al 2018). Initiatives in charity can be defined as to help out the community by
providing them basic resources as medicines, money, food all these can be done
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during the charity program. Victim support agency support the 55000 domestic abuse
survivors. They also proceed to identify the reason as why victims of the domestic
abuser resist to engage with the cops, which help them to lead the case of the victim
(Campbell and Sanders, 2021). Charity strategy involves the organizational principles
and prediction as how they will go further to accomplish the mission. It involves how
company will design their priorities to deal with the changes. Strategies of the victim
support organization is to empower the people to create their resilience and to guide
them to develop the skills in order to acquire their rights. They work in collaborating with
the multi positive agencies to fulfil the requirements of the victims of crime.
Organization is also committed to support the environmental activities, as to enable
them team to carry out the work which meets the sustainability.
Victim support organization does in relation to the policy research and
campaigning
Victim supports organisations' policy and research team focuses to understand
the situation of the victims and to enhance their experience or witnesses the offence in
a criminal justice system. Their main aims is to take stand for the victims and to
improve the criminal justice system.
Discussion over the charity scope of work in relation to service provision
Service provisions are basically related to the setting up of certain services and
management of data related to the issues that has been collected within the report.
Basically the Victim's support is the work paper that illustrates various issues related to
the domestic abuse and violence that drastically impacts the physical as well as
emotional well-being of an individual or survivors. The abuse can be in any format such
as physical, mental, emotional, financial, etc. Thus, in order to resolve such kind of
crucial issues among the society, the Victim Support charity is an independent
establishment situated in England and Wales that provides specialist practical and
emotional support to different victims and witnesses of crime. They provide free and
confidential services to people for 24X7 hours who faced crime and traumatic events
(Akbari, Sadeghi and Jahedi, 2017). The scope of the work illustrates that people
currently are afraid of reporting the crime to police officers due to various considerable
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reasons and hence the charity appropriately able to provide independent services to the
victims among the society by addressing their issues without reporting the crime to the
police or getting help from them.
Although in their document they highly recommend various ways which
enhances the trust factor among the police officers and the victims and also supports
the reporting of crime as per the government requirements because it helps the
government agencies to identify the exact rate of crime that has been done among the
society.
Role of charities in researching, campaigning and policy making
Large charities tend to provide various services within the society in order to help
varied people by providing certain training sessions, internships and structured career
development opportunities. They have great and complex structures with very specific
and specialized job functions as compared to smaller establishments. The role that has
been described in context of marketing, communication and campaigning as it helps to
raise awareness with a hope that more people will donate. This can considered over
the name of publicity. With the help of social media, fast and effective targeting of
potential donors volunteers and contributors for fundraising and other campaigns aimed
at internet users. In context of policy development and research, the charities needs to
raise their awareness and provide required analysis to influence the people (Elkin,
2018). These are the organizations who contribute their part into implementing the
strategies and expected to create relationship with their stakeholders along with unlike
establishments.
Basically charities are the ones who bring together the people who care about a
cause so that they are able to make a difference among other competitors. They are
the ones who directly help in lots of diversified ways, giving information within the
society regarding the specific issues and raise awareness for that problem among
public. In context of policy making the charities sets out specific roles by discussing
over who will be accountable for doing which kind of task, what kind of steps they need
to take and which kind of documents they will utilize to address issues.
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Discussion over the social problem and objectives highlighted in Survivor's Justice
document
Survivor's Justice is a document or report that has been written down after
contacting 55000 survivors of domestic abuse and provided support to mare than
34000 people (Ewin, Bates and Taylor, 2020). The documents id highly based and
written over the objectives such as the barriers to reporting the abuses, the ways in
which the police respond to their victims, the usage of protection orders, the role of
criminal courts and access to the compensation. Within the report which has been
written down and based upon varied survivors as well as case workers it had been
identified that there are numerous reasons due to which domestic violence or abuse
victims do not engage with the police. They are highly affected by the fear of offender
and a step-up of abuse, involvement of social services and the belief that the police will
not take them seriously restricts them to do complaints against the abusers. The
document had been written over the issue of domestic abuse according to which most
of the victims are highly impacted in the physical and emotional manner in context of
individuals as well as families that have experienced similar kind of actions (Grace,
2021). In this report, it had been identified that one third of all adult killings are related
to domestic abuse and almost half of the female victims were killed by their partner.
Hence, it has been evaluated that physical violence is used as a form of power in
intimate relationships along with verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and similar kind of
activities.
In order to resolve such issues up to some extent, the Victims Support Charity
adopts certain measures to resolve domestic abuse and thus design services in a
manner that fit with local and national partnership strategies with an aim to combating
and reduce specific activities within the society. Another issue that has been identified
within this report is that majority of victims do not report to the police regarding the
criminal activity that has been done with them because of lack of trust issues over the
police and criminal justice system. Basically the perception of police treatment, and not
the favourability of final results creates a kind of satisfaction level among the survivors.
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Survivor's Justice document principle arguments and findings
In the report of Survivors Justice document, it has been identified that there are
varied barriers that stops the victims to complaints to the police about the abuses that
has been provided by the partners and family members of the victim. The study
illustrates that domestic abuse survivors do not report because of the concerns related
to police, barriers such as housing and financial concerns, cultural and community
barriers, etc. Hence, in order to fulfil and resolve the requirements the CPS should work
to improve communication level and publicity around successful prosecution of
domestic abuse including sending messages locally that should be taken seriously at
any cost (Saunders, 2017). Another findings are related to the response of police
officers towards the domestic abuse and the victims that faces huge number of barriers
to reporting their issues. But with the passing time the trust factor builds among the
citizens as survivors are now able to receive great responses from the police officers.
For that it has been recommended that all the officers should undertake training
sessions over domestic abuse by specified specialists. The report had also further
shares the description over the domestic violence protection notices and orders
according to which certain orders and protection notices should be introduced all across
police forces in England and Wales. Thus, the recommendations in order to deter
perpetrators from breaching of orders and notices, police should monitor the
compliance throughout the duration of the order. Furthermore, the criminal court
working and access to compensation also have been discussed within the document
according to which it has been identified that Criminal scheme injuries compensation is
not fit for purpose and is in high need of change as well as clarification (Fox and
Galvani, 2020). Moreover, the limit of applications along with the length of time taken to
process criminal kind of injuries compensation claims also had been re-examined in
highly responsible manner. Therefore, removing barriers, improving police responses,
strengthening protection orders, improving court experiences, and ensuring fair access
to redress can help the maximum to resolve such kind of crucial issues that are related
to the domestic abuse.
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CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that it is greatly significant to put
serious efforts by the charity organizations as well as the government authorities in
order to reduce such type of drastic crimes which highly involves domestic abuses and
violence activities. The report is completely based upon the document that has been
written namely Survivors Justice under which various problems had been discussed by
the writer. Part from various issues, certain specified recommendations also had been
discussed in detailed manner so that the society people are able to take advantages
from specified rules and regulations that needs to addressed in highly effectual manner.
It illustrates the position and condition of victims and survivors of domestic abuse along
with the experiences of the criminal justice system.
Apart from this, the report also highlighted the aspects that helps to describe aim
and objectives of the study along with values of policies, scope, importance of charity
document, discussion over the social problems and principle arguments as well as
certain findings in effective manner.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Akbari, B., Sadeghi, S.A. and Jahedi, Z.S., 2017. Comparing Levels of Domestic Abuse
and Emotional Regulation of Normal Women and Women Exposed to
Violence. Razavi International Journal of Medivin e. 5 (3).
Bilali, R. and Vollhardt, J.R., 2019. Victim and perpetrator groups’ divergent
perspectives on collective violence: Implications for intergroup
relations. Political Psychology. 40. pp.75-108.
Campbell, R. and Sanders, T., 2021. The Invisible Victim: Barriers to Accessing
Criminal Justice. In Sex Work and Hate Crime (pp. 85-105). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Elkin, M., 2018. Domestic abuse in England and Wales: year ending March
2018. statistics OfN, ed.
Ewin, R., Bates, E.A. and Taylor, J.C., 2020. Domestic abuse orders: risk, vulnerability
and training. Journal of criminological research, policy and practice.
Fox, S. and Galvani, S., 2020. Substance use and domestic abuse.
Gomes, C.A., 2021. PRACTITIONER APPLICATION: RISE: Exploring Volunteer
Retention and Sustainability of a Second Victim Support Program. Journal of
Healthcare Management, 66(1), pp.31-32.
Grace, J., 2021. Domestic Abuse Disclosure Schemes: Problems with Policy,
Regulation and Legality.
Hagemann, O. and Emerson, G., 2020. Victim-Initiated Restorative Justice. In An
International Perspective on Contemporary Developments in Victimology (pp.
239-253). Springer, Cham.
Kelley, S.M., Zhang, Y. and O’Neal, E.N., 2021. To report or not to report? A focal
concerns analysis of victim reporting decisions following victimization. Journal
of interpersonal violence, p.08862605211045333.
Kemplay Adhikari, J.E.V., 2018. The assessment of impulsivity and aggression and
their contribution to risk in domestic abuse (Doctoral dissertation, University of
Leeds).
McCoy, E. and et.al 2018. Delivering Justice for Human Trafficking Survivors:
Implications for Practice. Urban Institute.
McGuire, J., Evans, E. and Kane, E., 2021. Victim Counselling and Support: A Review
of Police, Community and Therapeutic Interventions. Evidence-Based Policing
and Community Crime Prevention, pp.361-415.
Merandi, J. and et.al 2017. Deployment of a second victim peer support program: a
replication study. Pediatric quality & safety. 2(4).
Saunders, D.G., 2017. Evaluating the evaluators: Research-based guidance for
attorneys regarding custody evaluations in cases involving domestic abuse.
Singh, R., 2019. Victim support services, compensation and rehabilitation.
Stafford, C. and Leoni, J., 2019. Supporting the children who live with domestic
abuse. Seced, 2019(2), pp.12-13.
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Winning, A.M. and et.al 2021. Validation of the second victim experience and support
tool-revised in the neonatal intensive care unit. Journal of patient safety. 17(8).
pp.531-540.
Wood, L. and et.al 2020. Voluntary, survivor-centered advocacy in domestic violence
agencies. Advances in Social Work. 20(1). pp.1-21.
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