Victim Movement Research Articles

Collaborative Problem-Solving Partnerships: Advancing Community Policing Philosophy to Domestic Violence Victim Services

Throughout the last three decades, victims and victim advocates have significantly advanced victim's rights and services and have altered the fabric of police-victim interactions from viewing victims as necessary witnesses (Laszlo and Burgess, 1979; Waller, 1990) to engaging victims and victim organizations as collaborative partners in developing victim-oriented criminal justice services. As criminal justice agencies seek to engage stakeholders in problem-solving strategies, victims and victim organizations are becoming active partners in prevention, intervention, and restitution initiatives, and have been instrumental in tailoring criminal justice systems services to the needs of special populations. This paper describes four ongoing efforts to effect prevention, intervention, and restitution activities for special populations of victims and, in particular, to advancing community policing and community government in or for special populations. Within the historical contexts of the victim's movement, these efforts manifest the expanding role of victims as collaborative partners of police (including tribal police), prosecutors, and the courts.

Therapeutic and iatrogenic interventions with adults who were sexually abused as children

The field of sexual victimization and trauma has generated incompatible paradigms that confuse conceptualization, assessment, and treatment for adult survivors of child sexual abuse. It is crucial to be aware of potential iatrogenic concepts and interventions, especially those involving litigation, obsessing about past trauma, self esteem as a victim, quest for external validation, identification with the victim movement, exploration of repressed memories as a goal in itself and focus on the past at the expense of being a survivor in the present. Core therapeutic concepts are accepting oneself as a survivor; experiencing adult sexuality as volunatry, mutual, and pleasure-oriented, and feeling deserving of healthy sexuality; and focusing on living well in personal, sexual, marital, and parenting roles .

Certainty of Justice: Reform in the Crime Victim Movement.

Certainty of Justice: Reform in the Crime Victim Movement.

Certainty of justice: reform in the crime victim movement

Under the banner of rights of crime victims, a social movement that started in the late 1970s now promotes new laws and social services in the behalf. Like many previous American reform movements, this one is diverse, sometimes reactionary, filled with borrowed ideas, and permeated with self-serving elements. It has already changed our concept of justice, by defining a role for crime victims (and their family members) beyond the evidentiary need of the prosecution in a court of law. It demands that the law, standing in for society as a whole, use its authority to demonstrate the triumph of good over evil rather than to bear out the bureaucratic process. Weed portrays the rights movement as having developed out of a confluence of very different agendas for social action: the national conservative crusade for law and order on one side, and the feminist movement's concern with violent crimes against women on the other. As the movement has gained momentum it has acquired a complex organizational system of national centers and grass roots groups. Certainty of Justice takes an inside look at this system - at some of the people who run these groups, and at the issues promoted by their agenda. It also examines some of the consequences of the work of the movement, reflected in recent changes in state and federal laws enacted and decisions rendered in the name of victims' rights.

206 HORTICULTURAL SCIENCE AND FORENSIC SCIENCE: THE POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION OF HORTICULTURAL SCIENTISTS AT CRIME SCENES

The criminal justice system is served by many experts who provide special assistance to law enforcement professionals during criminal investigations. One of these specialized areas. forensic botany, has traditionally been an activity of the systematic botanist who identifies plant material associated with a suspect or crime scene. From this Information, suspects can be placed at crime scenes and information such as time of death or movement of victims can be determined. Few plant scientists are involved In this emerging field which has the potential to make contributions similar to those made today by forensic anthropology. Plant scientists with training In systematic botany, plant anatomy, plant growth and development, and statistics and probability can make significant contributions to criminal investigations. The use of plant identification and plant growth analyses In recent criminal Investigations will be described. The role of horticulture in the future of forensic science and the development of new techniques In forensic plant science will also be discussed.

Victim participation in sentencing: Rhetoric and reality

The revival of interest in victims of crime during the 1970s and 1980s has resulted in various reforms to alleviate the problems for victims resulting from crime and from encounter with the criminal justice system. The most recent reforms have centered on the integration of victims in the criminal justice process, in an attempt to reduce their feelings of alienation and perceptions of injustice. The central achievement has been the victim impact statement. This article examines the development of the concept of victim impact statement, its rationale, its various forms, and the experience with implementing this right. It also examines recent research that has addressed the concerns and objections to implementing victims' rights to participation in sentencing. The implications of the use of the victim impact statement for the criminal justice system and the victim movement's goals are drawn and discussed.

Victim's Rights and the Constitution: Reflections on a Bicentennial

This article examines the unfolding, activities, and successes of the victim's rights movement within the American constitutional framework of the Bill of Rights. It analyzes the general importance of “victims” as an effective political symbol and probes the connection between the victim movement and the powerful conservative forces that have dominated American life and the shaping of the criminal justice agenda during the 1980s. It focuses in particular on the cooptation of the victim's movement by the proponents of the “crime control” model of criminal justice. It contrasts the liberal and conservative approaches. solutions, and agendas and the clashes between the rights of the accused and those of the victim. It also looks for points of convergence and working agreement. Restitution is utilized as an example of an idea and plan that could bring disparate interests together. The article dedicates considerable space to a consideration of a possible constitutional foundation for victim's rights and concludes by pointing out the inherent dangers and destructive divisiveness that can be generated by an exclusive or excessive or excessive emphasis on “rights.”

The Crime Victim Movement at Its First Decade

During the last 10 years a crime victim movement has developed in the United States. Throughout the country, there are more than 2,000 victim assistance programs. In addition, self-help groups and reforms in state laws giving rights to crime victims are flourishing. The movement has received impetus from the Presidential Task Force on Victims of Crime established in 1982, a federal Victim and Witness Protection Act passed in 1982, the Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence, and most recently from the Victims of Crime Act of 1984, which creates a fund for state victim service and compensation programs financed by penalties levied against federal offenders. Typically, service programs help victims cope with the psychological and practical aftermath of a crime; but compensation programs reimburse victims for lost earnings and medical expenses that result from a crime. As the first decade of the victims' movement draws to a close, the challenges of the second emerge. Where should victim programs be housed? Should the priority of victim advocates be to respond to social service needs or to establish victims' rights in the criminal justice system? How is emotional support provided best: through self-help groups, by victim assistance workers, by psychologists and psychiatrists? Are special services needed, or are they already available through existing programs and from the victim's family and friends? To answer these questions, victim advocates and policy makers should look backward to the two sources of the victim movement-the concern of law enforcement officials about the failure of victims to report crimes and cooperate with prosecutors and the interest of the women's movement in the plight of rape and spouse abuse victims. These two sources are reflected in the organizational structure of existing programs and in the kinds of services and rights available to crime victims. They will also undoubtedly shape the future of the victim movement.