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Responding to the launch of the 2025-30 policing plan, Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime NI Geraldine Hanna said:
“I really welcome the focus on victims of crime in the policing plan 2025-30.
“Victims have often told me that they feel like bystanders or spectators during their experience with the criminal justice system.
“This strategic focus on victims must filter through the whole organisation and mean that anytime a victim walks into a police station, any time they pick up the phone to the police, they will feel like they matter.
“If it’s done right, this focus can increase victim’s confidence to come forward and support prosecutions and lessen the harm caused to them by their experience in the criminal justice system.
“Since taking up this post I have been calling for the better collection of data so we can understand what is working well and what isn’t.
“I was particularly pleased to hear the Policing Board discuss the metrics by which success of this policing plan will be determined.
“Police officers and staff have a crucial role to play in supporting victims of crime. They have an incredible responsibility and they need support to do that.
“That’s why it’s important that the Executive adequately fund the PSNI and the entire justice system, so that it can provide the victim-centred services those victims deserve.
“The approach adopted by the PSNI in this plan is positive and will be welcomed by victims, but at the moment it is just words on a page.
“What victims need to see over the next five years is proper funding for the police to help translate those words into tangible real-world changes.”