Victims' rights organizations and the Daubney Committee: An examination of claims and their incorporation.

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to assess the response of the Daubney Committee to the claims of five victims' rights organizations. Victims' rights organizations claim that the criminal justice system consistently fails to keep dangerous offenders incarcerated and drinking drivers off the road, resulting in considerable threat to the public. Chapter 2 presents a number of theories that have dominated the notion of social problems and claims making in the last fifty years. Of particular interest is the notion of "claims-making" as its focuses on explaining a social problem as a series of claims made by a person or a group about an issue. Chapter 3 offers a brief historical account of the establishment of several victims' rights organizations. Once established, victims' groups proceeded throughout the 1980s making claims and lobbying for fairer treatment. Chapters 4 and 5 concern the primary claims-making activities of the five victims' rights organizations in this study, and focuses on how these claims-makers framed issues in order to attract attention. Chapters 6 and 7 explore whether the Daubney Committee responded to claims-making by these five groups. Chapter 7 introduces Bill C-36. This legislation is important as it embodies the spirit of the Daubney Committee. It will be argued, that while the Daubney Committee made a concerted effort to respond to some of the concerns expressed by victims' rights organizations only those concerns seen as reparative in nature were seriously considered. Chapter 8 illustrates this point, listing the expectations of the victims' group and the response of the Daubney Committee in a table format. In Chapter 9, the thesis concludes by suggesting that the creation of an amendment to the Canadian constitution would be a necessary step in ensuring fair and equitable treatment for victims of crime. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)