Building on a major research project exploring victims' access to justice over time and place, Victims' Access to Justice considers the potentialities for victims' participation in criminal justice systems and in victim programmes both in historical and comparative context.

Pamela Cox is Professor in Sociology at the University of Essex, UK.

Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, UK.

1. Introduction: Victims' Access to Justice: A (Brief) Contemporary History 1945-2015 Pamela Cox and Sandra Walklate, Section One: Mapping the Historical Continuities of Victimhood, 2. The Crown Against...: The Victim and the State in the Pursuit of Criminal Prosecution, 1840-1985 Ruth Lamont, 3. Divergent victims in the Old Bailey, 1950-1979 Heather Shore and Lucy Williams, 4. Using Crime Survey Data to Track and Measure Access to Justice: Problems and Possibilities Elisa Impara, 5. The Changing Landscape of Service Delivery for Victims of Crime in England and Wales in the Last Fifty Years Rob I. Mawby, Section Two: The Legacies of Adversarialism for Victims' Access to Justice, 6. Gender, Sexual Violence, and Access to Justice in India Ravinder Barn and Ved Kumari, 7. 'I want Your Tears and I Want Them to be Real': Exploring the Construction of 'Ideal' and 'Non-ideal' Victims in the Independent Assessment Process for Indian Residential School Abuse Konstantin Petoukhov, 8. Analysing the Victim Review Scheme of Decisions Not to Prosecute in England and Wales and Within Comparative Jurisdictions Marie Manikis and Mary Iliadis, Section Three: Victims' Access to Justice: Lessons from Non-adversarial Jurisdictions, 9. The Swedish Welfare Model and the Development of Social Services for Crime Victims Kerstin Svensson and Carina Gallo, 10. Victim Participatory Rights in Dutch Criminal Proceedings: A Review of Research on Their Potential Effectiveness Maarten Kunst, Joyce Schot, and Antony Pemberton, 11. The Critical Presence of Absent Victims in Criminal Policy: Fragments of Spanish Legislation Gema Varona, 12. Evolution of Victims' Access to Criminal Justice in Brazil Thiago Pierobom de Ávila