Victims’ role in the criminal justice system

Date01 December 2017
DOI10.1177/1461355717730834
Published date01 December 2017
Subject MatterArticles
Article
Victims’ role in the criminal justice system:
A statutory analysis of victims’
rights in U.S.
Francis D Boateng
Department of Legal Studies, University of Mississippi, Oxford, USA
Gassan Abess
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, John Carrol University, University Heights, USA
Abstract
In theory, crime victims have several rights and privileges—ranging from the rights to be heard to the right to confer with
the prosecution. However, they are still considered as the forgotten individuals in the system because of underlying issues
associated with the implementation of victims’ rights laws. Today, most states do not have any effective mechanisms of
implementing legislation guaranteeing the rights of victims. The primary purpose of this article is to offer a comparative
assessment of victims’ rights legislation in USA and to discuss some of the issues inherent in the implementation of these
laws. Issues such as the lack of professional knowledge, the lack of enforcement mechanisms, strict eligibility criteria for
compensation, varying definitions of victim across jurisdictions, and the limited scope of most crime victim legislation are
discussed. The article also discusses ways to address the issues identified.
Keywords
Crime, victims’ rights, legislation, victimology, criminal justice
Submitted 08 Mar 2017, Revise received 25 Jul 2017, accepted 21 Aug 2017
Introduction
Recent treatment of victims by criminal justice profession-
als continues to raise questions about the rights and privi-
leges accorded to these individuals in the criminal justice
system. Victims of all types of criminal activities are con-
stantly ignored and forgotten throughout the entire criminal
justice proceedings. Several incidents support this assertion
about the American criminal justice system. For instance,
on 2 June 2016, a California judge leniently sentenced a
Stanford university student, to a 6-month jail term for sexu-
ally assaulting a young college woman, who was heavily
intoxicated at the time of the incident. A similar case hap-
pened in 2013 when a Montana judge sentenced a man to
30 days in jail for raping a high-school student back in
2008. Both sentencing decisions met with severe negative
public reaction; notable among them were victims’ rights
advocates who not only described the sentences as lenient
and unfair, but also called for the removal of the judges
involved. The implications of these short sentences are
severe and damaging to the victims (McCullough e t al.,
2001; Miller, 2001). These scholars believed that unfavor-
able sentencing outcomes defy the purposes of retaliation,
including restoring the victim’s self-esteem and protecting
the victim against re-victimization. Short sentences there-
fore undermine the victim’s self-esteem, increase sense of
powerlessness and enhance fear and insecurity among the
victims.
Another event that underscores the maltreatment of
crime victims in the system was how a Florida judge mis-
handled a domestic violence victim on 30 July 2015. The
judge did not only berate the victim, but also sentenced
Corresponding author:
Francis D Boateng, Department of Legal Studies, University of Mississippi,
Odom Hall 218, University Park, Oxford, MS 38677, USA.
Email: fboateng@olemiss.edu
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2017, Vol. 19(4) 221–228
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355717730834
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