Samenvatting

The legal position of crime victims has been greatly extended in the Netherlands in the last decades, particularly within criminal proceedings. Victims have been granted a number of rights within these proceedings. Well known are the right to file a compensation claim and the right to deliver a victim statement. This legal ‘emancipation’ is rather remarkable in light of the distrustful attitude the Dutch legislator for a long time has had towards victims. The aim of this study was to explore which factors may explain this turnaround. This was done through a systematic and critical review of the literature. In 4 Dutch databases (BJu tijdschriften online, Kluwer navigator, Legal Intelligence en Sdu OpMaat) we searched for relevant publications. To ensure that no other relevant publications were missed, we screened the reference lists of these publications and their authors’ publications lists and entered their titles in Google Scholar to check for relevant citing and related publications. Eventually, twenty-seven publications were included in the literature review. These publications provided 10 different explanations for the legal emancipation of crime victims. However, the large majority of these explanations were not based on historical research and may therefore be unreliable and invalid. More research is needed to confirm or refute the role these factors played in the extension of victims’ legal position.