| Summary: | 博士 === 中央警察大學 === 犯罪防治研究所 === 107 === Criminal death cases influence victim families greatly. They suffer not only psychological impacts due to losing of family members but also face severe problems related to the lengthy criminal justice process and rebuilding their life routines. In addition, to provide victim families substantive assistance, an integrated service network involving different units is needed to handle various issues caused criminal offending. Using secondary data analysis and data mining, this study analyzed statistics maintained by protective agencies between 2012 and 2015 and interview data collected from eight victim family members. The policy Delphi method was used to gather information from 20 experts to understand the criminal justice process experienced by victim families and provide appropriate restorative services.
The main findings of this study include: (1) characteristics of victim family members such as gender, economic status, marital status, place of residence, time and frequency of help seeking, and reason of closing the case are significantly related to service demands; (2) murder cases have greater needs than traffic incidents in terms of legal assistance, psychological counseling, economic aid, and social worker help. Women were in greater need for legal assistance than men. Low and mid-low income families showed higher demands for psychological counseling and
economic aid; (3) criminal justice practitioners suffered role conflict during the process of helping victim family members, causing inconsistency between services and expectations and difficulties in job performance; and (4) the current victim protection system lacks adequate integration between
justice system and social services, leading to second or multiple damages among victim family members.
Based on research findings, this study suggests that: (1) enhancing training of police officers in their skills of delivering death notices, improving prosecutors’skills of communicating with victim families, allowing victim family members an opportunity to express their thoughts in front of a judge, having social workers to offer appropriate services to victim families, and offering legal aids to victim families; (2) closely monitoring media reports on victim incidents, protecting victim family members privacy and safety; (3) strengthening the role and position of victims and their families in the process of justice and giving them the rights of participating in criminal litigation, evidence investigation, interrogation and independent appealing; and (4) revising the victim compensation system to help family members to rebuild their lives.
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