Victim Advocacy: 36 Years, Mostly Unpaid | Howard Brown

Well, one of the things that we all need to understand about the criminal law is that if you call the police, you are no longer the victim.

You are a witness for the prosecution.

They don't see you as the victim.

And I needed to change that.

Look, people need to understand when a child is murdered, the impact on the parents and the family is immense.

The impact on the community is immense.

And if we are going to try and discourage this type of criminal activity, the only way we can do it is to let the community know what the impact is of that.

And if a defendant has the right to be properly defended, which I support, I'm a great advocate of that, so should the victim.

And when people opposed us, people like the New South Wales Bar Association, the New South Wales Law Society, they said these changes that you're seeking, you know, the introduction of victim impact statements, that will see the legal system just completely and utterly fall apart.

And I've gone, excuse me, that's just bullshit.

It's not.

But Howard, why does a victim impact statement matter as opposed to a conviction or a sentence? What does it give that a conviction or a sentence doesn't?

When we sought to introduce victim impact statements, the Bar Association thought that our approach was that should form part of the evidence.

And I said, no, that's not our intention.

We don't want to influence evidence based on emotion.

But once the jury has reached a verdict, and if they reach a verdict of guilty, a judge then has to evaluate what type of punishment is appropriate for the defendant.

That's when victim impact statements are read.

After conviction...

but prior to sentence.

And that's a really important distinction.

And with that distinction, and the reason we did that, is that a judge has to look at the impact that the crime has had on the community so that he can formulate a penalty which is appropriate, giving consideration to the abject seriousness of the crime, the nature of the crime and, of course, more importantly, the defendant's attitude.

And where a defendant is completely nonplussed about it all, laughs and smirks during the entire proceedings, which is just an insult to the victims, a judge must take that into account.

And so one of the things that we do in our victim impact statements is we don't write them until we have a conviction.

And then when we get that conviction, then we write the victim impact statement.

So we can say, sitting in court, watching this person smugly laughing and grinning after having taken the life of a person or persons, you need to take that into account because the whole purpose of sentencing in New South Wales is to denounce criminal activity, to punish criminal activity and then to formulate rehabilitation.