Women Victims and the Criminal Justice System: A Comparative Analysis Between Common Law and Civil Law Countries

The laws on rape, domestic violence, and sexual assault have undergone major reforms in various common law and civil law countries, to the extent that the focus is being laid upon under-reporting of offences taking place against women and high rate of attrition in the criminal justice system, by emphasising on the necessity to avoid negative and prejudicial attitudes of the police, prosecutors, jurors, and judges towards the women victims. The unsympathetic attitudes of the criminal justice system led to victimisation of the victim and represents the bias existing in the criminal justice response towards the victims of sexual assault, rape, and domestic violence. Decades, after these law reforms, there is ample evidence to prove that victimisation of women victims happen at a high rate in the criminal justice system. The paper aims to present a comparative study and critical analysis of the criminal justice system responses in the United States, United Kingdom, France and India and other common law and civil law countries towards such victims from the perspective of police, prosecutors, jurors and judges and society per se. The paper argues that continued victimisation and prejudicial attitudes of the criminal justice system exaggerates the trauma suffered by these victims and results in less convictions of the accused, exonerating violent men.