The Crime Victims’ Rights Movement’s Past, Present, and Future (Part I – the Past)
I’ve just posted on SSRN my comprehensive law review article on the crime victims’ rights movement’s past, present, and future. This is the first of three posts this week, summarizing my article. This post discusses the roots of the movement. Historically, crime victims played a central role in criminal justice processes through private prosecutions—i.e., the ability of victims to initiate or participate in criminal prosecutions. In light of this history, the recent efforts to protect victims’ interests in the criminal justice system are a throwback to times past.
Interestingly, while the crime victims’ rights movement is often alluded to, no definitive history has yet been written. Perhaps this is because, at least among legal academics, relatively little interest exists in victims’ rights. But whatever the reason, this absence of a clear description of the movement has had important consequences. With the victims’ rights movement inadequately described, some critics have tried to paint it as nothing other than a “carceral rights movement”—a thinly veiled, retributive effort to lock up as many criminals as possible for as long as possible. Because the movement is broadly based, these academics have been free to cherry-pick a few victims’ initiatives and argue that they prove the movement’s general, punitive thrust.
My article responds to the critics who have capitalized on the void in scholarship to unfairly critique the movement’s aims and policy successes. Contrary to the simplistic portrait often drawn, the movement’s primary goals do not focus on substantive criminal case outcomes, such as increasing death sentences or extending prison terms. Instead, the movement is concerned with the procedural objective of ensuring that victims’ voices are heard throughout the criminal justice process. The movement contends that criminal just
Article from Reason.com
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