Knowing from where to start: a plea for more and better systematic literature reviews about the effectiveness of legal rights for crime victims

Abstract

Victimologists have often called for more empirical research into the effectiveness of legal rights for crime victims. In this article I contend that it is currently too early to heed such calls due to the lack of insight into prior research addressing this topic. I argue that systematic literature reviews can help us to get this insight, particularly if they adhere to the principles of the realist synthesis approach. A core strength of this approach is that it enables the interpretation of results from statistical analyses in relation to the theoretical mechanisms underlying the legal rights of interest and the contexts in which they have been implemented. This is not only important to set a sound agenda for future research, but also to direct the development and implementation of these rights and, eventually, to have crime victims truly benefit from them.