Secondary Victimization During Criminal Procedure
Secondary Victimization During Criminal Procedure

Summary/Abstract: In constitutional democracies, rules set down in writing that are both accessible and applicable to all (criminal procedural law) are used in prosecution, the goal of which is to ensure the lawfulness and fairness of the procedure by which crimes are brought to light and by which the penal code is brought to bear against the perpetrators of criminal activity. By their mere existence as directives to be followed, prosecutional laws carry with them a symbolic threat. We cannot claim that the eventual use of violence is an essential precondition of all prosecution, but it should nevertheless loom in the background, thereby helping to ensure the voluntary compliance and peaceful behaviour of the participants and so preventing the need to take the cane down off the wall in the first place. Both theoretical and practical research have shown that those who have committed a crime will try to avoid being held accountable for their actions, attempting to obstruct the authorities in their attempts to ascertain, in turn, the facts of the case through comprehensive investigation. Such behaviour goes some way towards providing the authorities with a basis for justifying the necessity of violence. Thus, if the threat represented by violence and other uses of force were taken away, the implementation of prosecutional laws and law enforcement would not be effective and it would be impossible to achieve the standards demanded by society. The other fundamental pillar supporting the use of violence is the existence of a high-level interest, namely a criminal-political interest, by which all members of society demand that successful law enforcement and the enforcement of criminal law be categorically upheld. The force of the belief is so strong that it provides a solid basis for the implementation of otherwise undesirable state-implemented violence. Stateimplemented violence can also exist in constitutional democracies, insofar as it is carried out in compliance with constitutional rights and within the specified limitations.

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