An Additional Role for Victims

Abstract This chapter expands the typology of victim participation by introducing and conceptualizing a novel type of participation: the role of victims as agents of state accountability within the criminal justice process. It identifies specific types of state failures—including individual and systemic—for which victims can hold the state accountable and outlines the different ways in which accountability can be understood. This is done by drawing on a range of frameworks from public law and public accountability literature. In particular, the chapter distinguishes between normative and descriptive conceptions of accountability, contrasts red light and green light functions of accountability, and situates accountability across both the public–private and substantive–procedural spectra. These diverse frameworks provide conceptual tools to analyse and compare how victims participate as agents of state accountability in the jurisdictions analysed in the following chapters.