Criminal Procedure And Criminal Victim

The criminal victim is a litigant participant whose legal rights and interests were infringed directly by crime. During the development of criminal procedure, the victim who enforced punishment themselves at the beginning had become the prosecutor, then been ignored, and then have regained high status. In other words, the status of victims in criminal process has fluctuated dialectically----drop from a high level, then rise again. With the development of victimology and the movement of protecting victims, in order to protect legal rights and interests of victims, many countries have balanced procedural rights between the victim and the defendant, instead of the early concentrating on that of the defendant. Strengthening protection of victims with legislation has been becoming a tendency of criminal justice system on a global scale, not only in the civil law countries where the victim enjoys a superior status in criminal procedure, but also in the common law countries where the victim's status in criminal procedure is lower comparatively. Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China, which was amended in 1996, pays more attention to victims; and the victim has become the party of litigation and enjoys fairly numerous procedural rights. However, the protection of victims' legal rights and interests is still defective. Based on analyzing victims' procedural rights and major defects in current law and administration of justice, in...