Just Interests

The idea of justice and the reality of justice are two very different things. Just Interests examines both concepts, offering accounts from lay people and legal officials to explore how the goals and interests of victims of crimes can be accommodated within the criminal justice process.

Robyn Holder challenges the typical classification of ‘victim’ for those who have been victimized by violence, and re-positions them as members of a political community with diverse interests – both private and public. Departing from conventional approaches that see victims as a problem for law to contain, Holder draws on democratic principles of inclusion and deliberation to posit a criminal justice approach that mobilizes citizens to produce justice in their ordinary lives.

This book will be of fundamental importance for analysts and advocates in governmental and non-governmental organizations to understand victims as citizens first and their engagements with criminal justice as citizenship practices. It will also be a valuable read for socio-legal scholars and researchers examining the constitutive nature of peoples and their public criminal law.

“'This is an excellent, considered and thought-provoking book that offers rich insights into complex conceptions of justice from ordinary citizens. The author devises and executes original research and communicates the background, significance, intellectual context and findings with great facility. The research is deeply textured, presenting thoughtfully analysed data and interesting findings that contribute to a conversation about the multi-faceted meaning of justice. Just Interests makes a welcome, significant and unique contribution to our understandings of what justice might mean. I enjoyed reading this book and believe it would be of interest to criminologists and socio-legal scholars, government and non-government stakeholders and advocates, and higher degree research students.'”

'Robyn Holder is a reflective practitioner and thoughtful scholar of victim perspectives on what justice might mean. This impressive book brings together years of her consolidated wisdom. It treats us to rich engagement with complex realisations of justice. Empirically, it amplifies voices from below to help us learn from their experience on how to better comprehend the complexity of justice. It helps us to find our own justice imaginary as we also search for a democratic imaginary.'
--John Braithwaite, Australian National University

'This book constitutes a significant and highly insightful contribution into deconstructing the meaning of justice. In positioning crime victims as a community of citizens who hold legitimate justice interests, the author's arguments are a welcome riposte to a needs-based analysis of the issues which confront victims in the criminal process.'
--Jonathan Doak, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Robyn Holder, Griffith University, Australia

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