The Cornwall service quietly supporting 20,000 crime victims a year

Report a crime and what happens afterwards can shape whether you ever trust the process again. That’s the thinking behind a week of training just held across the Devon and Cornwall force area, built entirely around the people on the receiving end of crime rather than those investigating it.

What Victim-Centred Week set out to do

Officers, staff and partner organisations came together last week for the second annual Victim-Centred Week, hosted by the Devon and Cornwall Victim Care Unit (VCU). The unit is funded by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and supports close to 20,000 victims a year, helping people through what the Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall described as often one of the most difficult periods of their lives.

Writing about the week, the Commissioner said reporting a crime and seeing it through to a conclusion can be an ordeal in itself, and that victims can be neglected and overlooked, not just by police but across the wider criminal justice system. Victim-Centred Week was framed as a chance to put that right, session by session.

Across the week, sessions covered victims’ rights and support services, restorative justice, modern slavery investigations, and the role of Family Liaison Officers. The message running through all of them, the Commissioner said, was that every interaction with a victim, from the first report to the end of a case, shapes how much confidence that person has in the whole system.

Restorative justice: a right many victims don’t know they have

One highlight was a Restorative Justice Summit hosted by the High Sheriff of Devon, bringing together people from policing, victim services and the wider justice sector to discuss how the process could be better promoted and delivered.

Restorative justice is one of the rights available to victims under the Victims’ Code, but it’s widely misunderstood and rarely used. It gives someone harmed by a crime the chance, where appropriate and under carefully controlled conditions with a trained practitioner, to speak directly with the person responsible after sentencing. Victims can ask questions and explain the impact the crime had on them. Offenders get the chance to understand the consequences of what they did and take responsibility for it. The Commissioner described the process as capable of being transformational for both sides.

The power, and the limits, of lived experience

The week closed with a session on what it means when victims share their own experiences. The Commissioner called it a moment of tremendous courage, one that helps challenge assumptions and shape the services built to support others, but was clear that listening on its own isn’t enough. The point of hearing a lived experience, they said, is to understand the real impact of crime and then ask what will actually change as a result.

Sarah West, the Victim Care Manager who helped coordinate the week, said it had been about turning that kind of listening into action. Feedback from those who attended pointed to the value of learning more about victims’ rights, the specialist support on offer, and the practical steps staff can take to get better outcomes for the people they’re dealing with.

A new guide to the justice process

The Commissioner’s office has also produced a guide called Criminal Justice and You, aimed at anyone reporting a crime and trying to navigate what comes next. It features people working across the justice system in Devon and Cornwall explaining their own roles, and is built with subtitles, sign language and audio to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

Delivering better outcomes for victims, the Commissioner said, isn’t down to the police alone. It takes policing, victim support services and justice partners working together so people are listened to, kept informed and supported through a process that can otherwise drag on and wear them down.