Victims of crime with disabilities in Ireland: invisible citizens within an adversarial paradigm of justice

Victims of crime with disabilities experience the more general problems associated with victimhood in Ireland including under reporting, lack of information provision, lack of private areas in courtrooms, and delays in progressing complaints. Very often, however, the centrality of their outsider status is also more pronounced. They experience marginalisation at a number of different levels in the criminal process including policy emphasis, the specific commitments given by criminal justice agencies, the requirements of the adversarial process, the criminalisation of conduct which involves the exploitation of persons with disabilities, the language employed by the criminal law, and service provision. The purpose of this article is to document the "invisible" status of victims of crime with disabilities in the Irish criminal justice system and to provide examples of the variety of ways in which this marginality manifests itself.