Victim Impact Statements Research Articles

The Impact of Sexual Abuse as Portrayed by Israeli Social Workers through the Victim Impact Statement

The current study reveals the forms of harm that Israeli social workers choose to portray to the judge through victim impact statements (VIS); what they choose to highlight; as well as the harmful aspects they choose to overlook. The study adopted an inductive-narrative approach; that is, the categories, themes, and patterns of analysis emerged from the data rather than being imposed by the outsiders. All statements focued on the same six themes: the child's emotional reactions; the child's behavioral, cognitive, and psychophysiological difficulties; the parents’ emotional responses; the family's restructuring; the victim's recommendations for punishment; and the social worker's diagnosis and prognosis. The similarities among the victims’ statements lead to several research and practical implications.

Recognising the Victim in the Sentencing Phase: The Use of Victim Impact Statements in Court

(2006). Recognising the Victim in the Sentencing Phase: The Use of Victim Impact Statements in Court. South African Journal on Human Rights: Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 647-663.

Beyond Impact: Examining the Communicative Presentation of Victim Impact Statements in a Non-Capital Case

Beyond Impact: Examining the Communicative Presentation of Victim Impact Statements in a Non-Capital Case

Balancing innocence and guilt: A metaphorical analysis of the US supreme court’s rulings on victim impact statements

This paper examines the generative metaphor of the balanced scales of justice in the US Supreme Court’s three rulings on the constitutionality of victim impact statements (VIS). The analysis argues that balancing the rights of defendants against the rights of victims risks unfair treatment for both—a result that is obscured by the metaphor in the Court’s opinions. The paper identifies the liabilities of metaphorical reasoning in US Supreme Court rhetoric on victim impact statements and illustrates that metaphor is a necessary tool for critiquing those liabilities.

Victim Policy Transfer: Learning From Each Other

This paper looks at the recent introduction of victim impact statements in several European countries. It asks whether victim impact statements are a positive addition to victim policy and practice in Europe and examines the challenges of adapting to the civil legal tradition a tool that was developed in a common law country.

Making an Impact on Juvenile Delinquents: An Approach to Victim Impact Statements that Everyone Can Embrace

ABSTRACTThe use of victim impact statements occurs in the majority of states' juvenile court proceedings. Many victims' rights advocates celebrate the use of these statements as a valuable means of victim empowerment, as victim impact statements allow victims to convey the personal effects that delinquent acts had on their lives directly to the courts. Yet at the same time, many oppose the use of victim impact statements in juvenile courts because they inhibit judges' ability to focus on delinquent juveniles' rehabilitative needs by infusing the victims' feelings and emotions into the disposition‐crafting process. This article suggests that a balance can be struck between these competing concerns by incorporating victim impact statements into the rehabilitative programs prescribed in the dispositions of delinquent youths, instead of using the statements as an influencing force in crafting the dispositions.

Four Models of Victim Involvement during Plea Negotiations: Bridging the Gap between Legal Reforms and Current Legal Practice

In recent years, there has been a clear trend towards recognizing the right of victims to participate more fully in the criminal justice process. In Canada, significant steps have been taken to ensure that victims are granted the right to participate formally in the sentencing and parole processes through the use of victim impact statements. However, to date, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of whether or not victims should be accorded a meaningful role in the process of plea negotiations. In Canada, plea bargaining has not been officially recognized and has not been subjected to judicial supervision. Indeed, plea negotiations occur behind closed doors, and victims have no right of participation. In the United States, however, plea agreements require judicial approval, and, in certain state jurisdictions, victims are accorded the right of participation in the judicial hearings that are held to determine whether or not a proposed plea agreement should be accepted by the trial court. This article identifies four potential models for the participation of victims in the plea negotiation process in Canada. The recommended model requires that plea negotiations be officially recognized by the Parliament of Canada; that plea negotiations be subjected to judicial regulation; and that victims be granted the right to make oral or written presentations to the trial judge concerning their opinions about the terms, and ultimate acceptability, of any proposed plea agreement.

Who Is the Victim Anyway? The Effects of Bystander Victim Impact Statements on Mock Juror Sentencing Decisions

Victim impact evidence was varied in a brief trial scenario given to 120 participants eligible for jury service. The scenario concerned the murder trial of a disgruntled employee accused of bombing his former workplace. Participants read either no victim impact evidence or one of three victim impact statements. For the victim impact statements, we varied the identity of the witness. The victim impact statement was given by either the wife of the victim, a coworker of the victim, or a firefighter called to the crime scene. Results revealed that only the victim impact evidence given by the coworker lead to harsher sentencing judgments. However, participants rated the suffering of the victim's wife as most severe, indicating that perceptions of suffering may not predict sentencing judgments in a straightforward manner. Implications for these findings for legal decisions such as Payne v. Tennessee (1991) are discussed.

Who Is the Victim Anyway? The Effects of Bystander Victim Impact Statements on Mock Juror Sentencing Decisions

Who Is the Victim Anyway? The Effects of Bystander Victim Impact Statements on Mock Juror Sentencing Decisions

Homicide, family victims and sentencing: continuing the debate about Victim Impact Statements

(2004). Homicide, family victims and sentencing: continuing the debate about Victim Impact Statements. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 253-257.

The prejudicial nature of victim impact statements: Implications for capital sentencing policy.

Victim impact evidence is presented during sentencing hearings to convey the harm experienced by victims and victims’ relatives as a result of a crime. Its use in capital cases is highly controversial. Some argue that the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the admission of victim impact statements (VIS) during capital sentencing proceedings (Payne v. Tennessee, 1991) invites prejudice and judgments based on emotion rather than reason. Others reason that it provides an important voice for survivors and affords the jury an opportunity to learn about the victim. The authors outline the chief psychological issues that arise in the context of VIS, including their relevance to jurors’ judgments of blameworthiness, concerns that the social worth of the victim will influence jurors’ sentencing decisions, and issues related to the emotional appeal of VIS. Psycholegal research on the influence of VIS on mock jurors is reviewed, and implications of this work for capital sentencing policy and suggested directions for future research are discussed.

Communication in Sentencing: Exploring the Expressive Function of Victim Impact Statements

The role of the victim in the sentencing process continues to generate controversy among scholars and practitioners across many jurisdictions. In this article we address some of the persistent objections to allowing victim input into sentencing. By placing the debate on victim input within its historical context, we suggest that the movement to provide victims with a voice has been derailed, as the communicative model of victim input — originally envisioned by the reform movement as its justification — was replaced by a model that stresses the impact of VIS on sentencing. We argue that much of the lingering opposition to victim input rights has been animated by this ‘impact’ model, which we argue is theoretically misconceived, empirically unsupported and at odds with major sentencing aims. We reintroduce the communicative model, which reflects the original intent and purpose of the victim reform concerning input, elaborating on its advantages for victims and offenders. We then provide two examples from the field to illustrate the therapeutic benefits of the model for both victims and offenders. We conclude with a call to reassess current theory and practice regarding victim integration in sentencing and offer some policy recommendations regarding the optimal way to integrate the voice of the victim at sentencing.

Can Virtue Be Bought?

Can Virtue Be Bought? Eugene Garver 1. The problem: Epistemic elitism or cognitive dominance Democracy and rationality can be enemies. Superior intelligence and information can silence people, and the voices of reason can be drowned out by anti-intellectual populism. Given the dearth of both democracy and rationality in contemporary American politics, I hope that each can be fortified by association with the other, but I don't think that mutual reinforcement is easy. I start by giving short quotations from two of the most significant contemporary thinkers who question the relation between democracy and intelligence. First a thesis from James Bohman that sets the challenge for practical intelligence and rhetoric in a democracy: "Deliberative democracy should not reward those groups who simply are better situated to get what they want by public and discursive means; its standard of political equality cannot endorse any kind of cognitive elitism" (1997, 332).1 Next, a longer passage from Henry Richardson: The fatal objection to an objectivist interpretation of arbitrary power [in which the public good is thought of as a determinate object] is that it excludes from counting as domination what should be counted as one of its primary cases, namely domination on the basis of superior knowledge and information. Whatever the content of the public good may be, we may suppose—absent liberal justificational restrictions—that there are some people who are relatively expert in discerning it. One way to track the public good with reasonable reliability, then, is to turn political decisions over to those experts or wise persons. If we accept an objectivist interpretation of what "nonarbitrary power" means, then we could not count such Platonic guardians as dominating us. Intuitively, however, I think that we would: They would be dominating us precisely in virtue of their superior knowledge and information about the public good. (2002, 41)2 [End Page 353] Bohman worries about the injustice of unequal powers of eloquence. Richardson worries about what I think is a harder problem, the injustice of unequal powers of practical intelligence, the domination by superior knowledge. These two concerns, rhetorical and epistemic, are related. In Hobbes's wonderful phrase, "eloquence is seeming prudence," everything turns on the permanently contested relation between the appearance of facility with public and discursive means and the reality of superior practical knowledge. The only practical knowledge worth worrying about is manifested practical knowledge. Richardson and Bohman pose the ethical problem of what happens to community when there are claims to superior practical wisdom. The question isn't whether such claims are true or false, but the conditions under which they can be asserted and accepted. When are successful claims to knowledge "arbitrary," "dominating," or in a word, unjust? Thus, David Estlund writes, "Even granting that some people might be far better at making the morally and technically best political decisions, such invidious comparisons among citizens are bound to be open to reasonable disagreement" (2000, 137). But the issue is whether such reasonable disagreement is itself grounds for denying the comparison. Why is a judgment of better and worse necessarily "invidious"? When is disagreement about what is the best political decision a "reasonable" disagreement? Of course we should worry when eloquence silences people. But many other things silence citizens, too. Some argue, for example, that the discursive power of cross-burning "has a silencing effect" since it intimidates African Americans, and similar arguments have been made about how pornography silences women, but it would be strange to call these powers superior eloquence, certainly not in the sense that Bohman, Richardson, and Estlund worry about (Fiss 1996, 119).3 Many forms of coercion and ways of limiting freedom have nothing to do with silencing, as they prevent us from even getting to a point where there can be discussion. Extra-discursive signs of power, such as age, wealth, or difference, can inhibit me from speaking my mind. The personal experience of a purported victim is hard to argue against. So are people with access to powerful symbols. For example, consider the resistance to some forms of victim impact statements. Opponents argue that these are too emotional to have probative value. Their presence is unfair. They are unfair because...

Victim Vices, Victim Voices, and Impact Statements: On the Place of Emotion and the Role of Restorative Justice in Capital Sentencing

This article examines the efficacy and legitimacy of using victim impact statements (VIS) during the penalty phase of capital cases. It is argued that the emotionally laden content of VIS (particularly victim allocution) fuels vengeance, anger, and hatred, thereby undermining prospects for a fair and impartial sentence and undoing prospects for a more meaningful and restorative experience of victim justice. To examine these dynamics, several principles of “critical” restorative justice are delineated, the empirical and legal limits of VIS are identified, society's urge to punish is conceptually and speculatively explored, and this tendency is juxtaposed against the extent to which compassion and forgiveness are important dimensions of the sentencing process. The article concludes with an outline of several policy reforms, consistent with critical restorative justice practice, explaining how personal/family harm following criminal wrongdoing can significantly be attended to for victims, offenders, and the community of which both are a part.

Construction of the Victim Impact Statement for Sexually Abused Minors: A Dramaturgy Approach

Summary This study examines victim impact statements (VIS) constructed by six Israeli social workers for the sentencing process in 17 cases of sexual abuse of minors. The VIS is seen not as a systematic description of the victim made by the social worker, but rather as a construction resulting from the relation between the child's story and the social worker's understanding and interpretation of it. As such, the paper identifies a number of strategies social workers employed to construct the statement: (1) telling the story in the form of drama; (2) limited use of the victim's voice; (3) contrast between extremes; (4) description of the abuse as an actorless event; (5) use of chorus to present conclusions; and (6) usage of metaphors, similes and analogies. Qualitative analysis of the VIS yielded a composite drama in four acts (episodes) covering four time periods: prior to the abuse, during the abuse, after disclosure and future prognosis. Our findings suggest that the ultimate intent of the drama is to establish new meanings of the traumatic experience for actors and audience. Two complementary meanings were highlighted in the VIS: the child's lack of blame and the need to severely punish the

Allocution for Victims of Economic Crimes

Currently, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32(c)(3)(E) provides for victim impact testimony in cases involving violence or sexual abuse. This article proposes that the rule be expanded to cover other federal felony cases -- particularly those involving fraud. After reviewing the relevance of victim impact testimony under the Sentencing Guidelines, the article compares the advantages of in-person victim impact testimony (more effective communication, the opportunity for expression, and increased victim satisfaction) with the advantages of written victim impact statements (efficiency, restraint on emotion, and minimal demands on the court's resources). It then considers some of the disadvantages of victim impact testimony (exacerbation of the victimhood experience, problems for those who may be anxious, inarticulate, or enraged). The article concludes by proposing an amendment to Rule 32(c)(3)(E) that recognizes that not all federal felonies have identifiable victims, and that not all victims (of multiple-victim frauds, for example) will always be able to testify. Nonetheless, the rule as amended would require courts to invite victim-impact testimony in most federal felony cases.

A Feminist Look at the Death Penalty

Amy E. Pope (*) I INTRODUCTION The death penalty has its fervent defenders and critics. In all the debate about the procedure, however, one has suggested how a feminist perspective might improve the discussion. Feminist theory can be helpful in several ways. First, we can learn from the lives of the women embroiled in the process. Indeed, fifty-four women currently live on death row. (1) Not only are women themselves imprisoned by the state, but women are also the mothers, sisters, and wives of those condemned to die. Countless numbers of women are the victims of the crimes for which men are sentenced to death. And women are, in still small but growing numbers, the judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys embroiled in the process. Second, and more importantly, the decision to impose the death penalty and the procedures for doing so present traditionally male ways of looking at the problem, presenting judges and juries with a limited means of considering the issues: Universal standards are divorced from context, dichotomous choices ar e imposed in place of a range of alternatives, and emotions are excised from the procedure. Imposing a feminist lens on the procedure will round out the largely one-sided argument. For these reasons and others, it is appropriate to look at the death penalty from a feminist perspective. How has the system affected the lives of women? How does the process and the punishment reflect the voices of women? Why are so few women sentenced with this penalty, and what does this imply about our culture? What is the feminist response to a procedure that ostensibly rids this country of the people who threaten women in the most violent ways? In Autumn 1998, Law and Contemporary Problems published an issue exploring the American Bar Association's Proposed Moratorium on the Death Penalty. (2) This note advances another argument in favor of the proposed moratorium-that, by employing feminist methodology to examine the death penalty, it becomes clear that the current procedural system fails to represent large numbers of those penalized under the system. Accordingly, the major purpose of this note is to start a conversation about the ways in which thinking from a feminist perspective may help us, as a society, to approach the death penalty in a more productive and holistic fashion. This note points out that, even when there is a horrible crime, and instinct calls for death, there are contextual factors that must be considered. Universal standards that require yes or no answers fail to address the needs of both the Victims of crime and its perpetrators. Until criminal procedure is reconfigured to better represent those voices, it is inappropriate for the democratic state to impose such a final and severe sentence. After a brief exploration of the need for a feminist perspective on capital punishment in Part II, Part III begins by determining which feminist methodology is most appropriate to an analysis of the death penalty. The strengths and weaknesses of two of the many models of feminist thought are specifically outlined. I do not attempt to defend the wisdom of one school of thought over the other; rather, my goal is to fuse the two theories to create a different way of looking at the capital punishment system. Part IV applies this hybrid methodology to the leading Supreme Court cases on the death penalty and asks whether we should have the death penalty at all. The note then considers, if we are to have the death penalty, how we might make the procedure more fair. Part V questions the procedures used to employ capital punishment and finds discrepancies in how the law handles cases involving crimes committed in the public and private sphere. Part VI considers victim impact statements as an example of an attempt to universalize the criminal justice system, and considers how the initiative has fallen short. The note concludes by suggesting that, while there is immediate resolution to the problem, rethinking capital punishment from a feminist perspective will start a more productive discussion of the issue. …

Review of Victim Impact Statements Scheme in Japan

Review of Victim Impact Statements Scheme in Japan

The Dead Victim, The Family Victim And Victim Impact Statements In New South Wales

(2000). The Dead Victim, The Family Victim And Victim Impact Statements In New South Wales. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 292-307.

Victim Impact Statements Considered in Sentencing

Victim Impact Statements Considered in Sentencing