THE VICTIM AS A FORGOTTEN FIGURE IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM – A FEW REMARKS IN THE LIGHT OF PAST FORMS OF PUNISHMENT

Abstract

This article focuses on selected problems regarding the evolution of the punishment process . The starting point remains the assumption that regardless of the historical period, every palpable form of injustice related to a violation of a certain area of goods has resulted in an intervention approved at the given moment in history . The study notes that in the early pre-state period, seeking a remedy for wrongdoing was a private matter of the victim (or their family or clan) who could in that wayavenge on their own the injustice they had suffered . The process of publicising criminal law that began at the end of the Middle Ages has marginalised the process role of a victim in the possibilities to seek the remedy . However, the vertical criminal law relationship has, over time, changed to some extent . The privatisation of the justice system – especially noticeable nowadays – makes it possible to see that consensual methods of resolving conflicts caused by an offence essentially contributed to the reversal of a certain historical process . That reversal was certainly intended to “reveal” the victim, and thus to return the conflict resulting from the offence to its “owners,” i .e . the perpetrator and the victim .