Just Interests: Victims, Citizens and the Potential for Justice. By Robyn Holder. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2018.

• Date: 01 June 2019
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12408

Just Interests: Victims, Citizens and the Potential for Justice.By

Robyn Holder. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2018.

Reviewed by Albert W. Dzur, Department of Political Science and

Philosophy, Bowling Green State University

This critical examination of the status of victims in the criminal

justice system takes up the ways they are marginalized in legal

theory and practice. Grounded in a qualitative study, the book

shows that victims have complex interests in pursuing justice and

that their expectations for the justice system are often unmet. A

practical and compelling idea of the victim as citizen emerges,

over the course of the book, to identify their hopes and capabili-

ties for being constructively involved.

The book is enriched by the author’s 15-year service as an

independent statutory advocate for victims’ rights in Canberra.

Her regular interactions with victims “revealed their bewilderment

with a system they thought they would know;” working alongside

legal professionals made it evident that their well-intentioned ideas

about justice pushed victims to the sidelines: “people as victims

were excluded, ignored or diverted … As a ‘victim’ they were seen

as a problem for law to manage and contain” (2). This seemed like

a lost opportunity to express and cultivate citizenship: to consider

“what had happened and what should happen next” regarding the

particular case “but also to debate and deliberate the issues that

confronted both victim and offender, and the social, political, eco-

nomic, and cultural aspirations they held for themselves and for

others” (2). Where were the “procedural and institutional spaces

for citizens to produce justice” (2)?

Conceptions of victims in legal theory legitimate this marginali-

zation, while practitioner attitudes help reproduce it. Though harm

to victims—as reported by victims themselves—is often necessary to

put criminal cases in motion, victims are not seen by legal profes-

sionals as having much of value to contribute to the production of

justice. Indeed, mainstream legal theory conceives of victims as

threatening the impartiality of the proceedings with a relentless

focus on winning their case. In addition, the prosecutors Holder

interviews for this book admit that victims are “ignored as a class of

people” and “nowhere to be seen” (93). This is unfortunate,

Holder points out, because her research shows victims to have “just

interests” that are broader than self-interest and reflect concern for

the process, the offender, and the community. Otherwise well-

meaning court professionals, she argues, have such low

Book Reviews 623