This paper problematizes the ways in which victim expectations intervene in Canadian parliamentary debates to justify repressive bills in the field of criminal law. Rather than attributing this repression to the victims’ expectations, we attribute it to the criminal justice system itself, and more specifically, within that system, to the cognitive programme of a “modern penal rationality”. This programme shapes, selects and constructs victims’ expectations in accordance with the system’s own expectations with regard to crime control and punishment. The victims’ needs are thus predominantly associated with the notion of deterrence and protection, both needs calling for harsher forms of punishment. But victims are also seen as now expecting their prejudices and dignity to be recognised by the system’s harsher forms of punishment. These latter expectations reveal a new theory of punishment which is here referred to as the “theory of victimhood’s dignity recognition”. The paper specifies its conceptual dimensions, its empirical indicators, and looks into its main issues with regard to the evolution of the criminal justice system.