In Due Process and Victims' Rights Kent Roach critically examines dramatic changes in criminal justice in the last two decades. He argues that increasing concern by courts about the rights of those accused of crime and by legislatures about the rights of crime victims and groups who are disproportionately subject to some crimes, such as women and children, has transformed debates about criminal justice. He examines recent cases in which due process and victims' rights have clashed and concludes that, in most instances, victims' rights claims have ultimately prevailed. He concludes that the future of criminal justice will depend on whether victims' rights continue to develop in a punitive fashion or whether they inspire increased emphasis on crime prevention and restorative justice.

This is the first full-length study of the law and politics of criminal justice in the era of the Charter and victims' rights. It examines changing discourse in the courts, legislatures, and media, and the role of women, young people, minorities, Aboriginal people, and crime victims in criminal justice reform. It builds new models of criminal justice based on victims' rights as alternatives to Herbert Packer's famous due process and crime control models. Roach draws on criminology literature about the growth of a 'risk society,' in which the risk of crime is more easily calculated and controlled, as well as writings concerned with restorative and Aboriginal justice.

Kent Roach is a professor of law and the Prichard-Wilson Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and of Yale University, and a former law clerk to Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. Professor Roach has been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and in 2013 he was one of four academics awarded a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellowship. He is the author of twelve books, including Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the Walter Owen Prize); Due Process and Victims’ Rights (shortlisted for the Donner Prize); The Supreme Court on Trial (shortlisted for the Donner Prize); Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (winner of the Dafoe Prize; co-authored with Robert J. Sharpe); and The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (winner of the David Mundell Medal). He is the co-editor of several collections of essays and published casebooks, including most recently Comparative Counter-Terrorism Law, which arose from his role as General Reporter on Counter-Terrorism Law for the XIX International Congress on Comparative Law held in 2014. With Justice Robert Sharpe, he is the co-author of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms volume in Irwin Law’s Essentials of Canadian Law series. False Security: The Radicalization of Canada’s Terror Law, co-authored with Craig Forcese, was published by Irwin Law in 2015. He has also written over 200 articles and chapters published in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in Canada. Professor Roach has served as research director for the Inquiry into Pediatric Forensic Pathology in Ontario (the Goudge Inquiry) and for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182. In both capacities, he edited multiple volumes of research studies. He served on the research advisory committee for the inquiry into the rendition of Maher Arar and the Ipperwash Inquiry into the killing of Dudley George. He was a special advisor to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools. Professor Roach has represented Aboriginal and civil liberties groups in many interventions before the courts, including Gladue, Wells, Ipeelee, and Anderson on sentencing Aboriginal offenders; Latimer on mandatory minimum sentences; Stillman, Dunedin Construction, Downtown East Side Sex Workers, and Ward on Charter remedies; Golden on strip searches; Khawaja on the definition of terrorism; and Corbiere and Sauvé on voting rights. He is the faculty lead for the Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights.

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