Chris Holtom obituary

Chris Holtom believed that the requirements of both victims and offenders are intertwined

The concept that the victim of a crime ought to have any expectations of the criminal justice technique beyond informing the police or currently being named as a witness is relatively current. In the 1960s there were isolated moves to care for victims, but it took until 1972 for the social operate lecturer Chris Holtom to stage to the law’s systematic failure to recognise, search following and involve victims. This lack prompted him to take a foremost role in the basis of the organisation Victim Help, which has because assisted more than 25 million people impacted by crime. Chris has died at the age of 86 soon after a extended illness.

His concern persuaded a group of folks in Bristol – members of the Nationwide Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (now known as Nacro), along with other individuals from the police and probation support – to uncover out more about how victims were impacted by crime. As effectively as learning a good deal about the difficulties that victims faced, they realised that there was small or no aid on offer. Nonetheless, this initial initiative ended in chaos since they had underestimated the demand, in terms of both emotional and bodily want.

An appeal to local charities this kind of as Rotary and Round Table enabled a restart in 1974, when the very first group going by the title of Victim Help was established. A broad variety of expertise had been essential: Chris had the unusual present of marrying academic information of social operate with the ability and drive to make it effective in practice. The regard in which he was held was evident at the reunion of the pioneers at the 25th anniversary celebrations in 1999. By that stage, the organisation had established a nationwide office (1980) Property Office leaflets were being provided to victims and witnesses (1988) the government had issued a Victim’s Charter (1990) and a phone Victim Supportline had been launched (1998). The anniversary year itself saw the Witness Service operating in all magistrates’ and crown courts in England and Wales.

Born in Studying to Marjorie, a VAD – volunteer – nurse, and her accounts clerk husband Reginald, Chris was educated locally at Leighton Park college. Its headteacher was EB Castle, whose daughter Hilary later on became Chris’s wife. In 1944 he joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman and following eight years left the services as a lieutenant. The encounter that led Chris to take into account a career in crime, punishment and rehabilitation came by means of being put in charge of a fellow officer awaiting elimination to serve sentence in England, and witnessing the man’s emotional deterioration.

Chris studied at the London School of Economics (1952-fifty five), gaining a diploma in social administration and certificate in utilized social research, and later on an honorary MSc in social science from Bristol University. He then joined the prison support as an assistant governor at Feltham Young Offender Institution for four years. But he located this “stultifying”, so grew to become a social function lecturer very first at Edinburgh University, and then at Bristol (1962-85).

The design and style of a volunteer-run Victim Assistance was Chris’s. As the care of victims grew by word of mouth and a beneficial BBC Open Door tv programme, other elements of the nation commenced their very own schemes, and it was the Bristol model that most of them followed.

This grassroots development was regularised in 1979 by the instituting of a Nationwide Association of Victim Assistance Schemes, with Dame Helen Reeves as its first director. Chris’s part now grew to become that of a supportive figure, encouraging the improvement of the function internationally, although continuing diligently at the nearby degree. In 1982 he grew to become a daily life vice-president of the nationwide physique.

His very own view, which went beyond Victim Assistance policy, was that the demands of the two victims and offenders are inextricably intertwined, this kind of that if stresses on victims can be decreased, then antagonism in direction of offenders might be also, and so the odds of offenders being reintegrated into society could be enhanced.

Chris was a guy of broad social concerns: he started out a Scottish branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform whilst at Edinburgh, and chaired the Bristol Discharged Prisoners Help Society, later on the Bristol Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (1962-85) and various schemes for older former prisoners and hostels for institutionalised younger offenders. In 1991 he was appointed OBE and his perform for Bristol was recognised with a Lord Mayor’s medallion in 1994.

As an antiquarian bookseller for far more than forty many years, he specialised in children’s books. French lifestyle and culture was one more passion and in his 80s, with no previous artmaking experience, he took up lino printing, generating sophisticated photos that had been realised by 1 of his daughters at Dartington Print Workshop, in Devon.

Chris married Hilary in 1952, and they had five daughters and a son. After Hilary died in 1986, he moved to Cornwall, exactly where he lived with his spouse May possibly Roberts. Following her death in 2007 he moved to the Cotswolds. He is survived by his kids, 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

• Christopher William Dupen Holtom, campaigner, born two May possibly 1927 died 3 November 2013

Chris Holtom obituary