Well-informed? Well Represented? Well Nigh Powerless? Victims and Prosecutorial Decision-making

Abstract This article provides a brief overview of the ways in which prosecutors must engage with victims in the course of their work in criminal proceedings and what formal roles victims can assume in criminal proceedings. Besides exploring what rights victims have per se in criminal proceedings, analysis is provided as to what it means to be an additional prosecutor or a private prosecutor in several European criminal justice systems. A brief analysis of the effects these rights and the use of prosecutorial discretion has on victims is provided. Keywords Forms of victim participation in trials. Victims in criminal proceedings Up to now, discussion in this report has focussed upon the consequences of developments based upon legal principles within European criminal justice systems or the increasingly flexible forms of defendant/prosecutor interaction within these systems. This short paper considers a different aspect; namely the standpoint of the victim. It presents data gathered to chart victims ’ options within the systems studied. Although, in some ways peripheral to the main issues in this wider report, these data are of importance as they are relevant to the way that the needs and rights of victims and the needs and rights o