The Crime Victims’ Rights Movement’s Past, Present, and Future (Part II – the Present)
This post is the second of three posts, serializing my comprehensive law review article on the crime victims’ rights movement. In yesterday’s post, I described the movement’s roots in the history of private prosecution. This post describes the movement’s last several decades, during which the movement has successfully created participatory rights for victims throughout America’s criminal justice system.
The modern victims’ rights movement began to stir in the late 1960s, coalesced in the 1970s, and gained momentum in the early 1980s. The movement has continued ever since “as one of the most significant and successful forces for reshaping the criminal justice process.” The movement’s birth can be traced to the confluence of five developments: (1) the creation of an academic field of victimology; (2) the introduction of state victim compensation programs; (3) the rise of the women’s movement; (4) an increase in crime and an accompanying dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system; and (5) the growth of victim activism.
In late 1982, the President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime published a report, calling for victims’ rights to be enshrined in criminal justice—and also for adoption of a federal constitutional amendment protecting victims’ rights. The Task Force’s report catalyzed crime victims’ rights efforts across the country. Indeed, the Task Force Report and other similar recognitions of victims triggered “a literal explosion of federal and state action to increase crime victim access to and participation in the criminal justice process.”
In 1986, four years after the Task Force released its report, the Justice Department surveyed changes in the criminal justice landscape concerning victims. The Department found that nearly 75 percent of the Task Force’s proposals had been implemented to some degree, including the creation of a new Office for Victims of Crime in the Department to help implement the reforms.
Perhaps the most important change sparked by the President’s Task Force was the creation of specific crime victims’ rights in criminal justice processes. Before 1982, the victims’ rights movement had spoken generally about protecting victims’ “rights” in criminal cases. Beginning in 1980, states began establishing specific victims’ rights by enacting statutory and constitutional victims’ bills of rights. Wisconsin was the first state to create a specific list of victims’ rights. In 1981, four more states followed suit, and, by 1989, 42 states had enacted statutes called a “victim bill of rights” and most of the remaining states had adopted similar statutory protections.
States also began to add protection for victims’ rights in their own constitutions. In 1982, California passed Proposition 8, which was the first state constitutional victims’ bill of rights. In a 1984, an ad-hoc gathering of national victim’s rights groups decided to first seek constitutional protection for victims’ rights in the states before undertaking the signif
Article from Reason.com
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