Heinous Crime: The Real Victims

I always felt that as long as the person is not harming someone else than he or she should do what they want. Victimless crimes block our pursuit to happiness. For instance, the drug war has been a proven failure. Marijuana has never killed anybody before, so why is that illegal? Marijuana is not the gateway drug; the drug dealer is the gateway. Suede (2012) states that we need prison reform, because 756 per 100,000 of our population are in jail for victimless crimes. Over 50 percent of our population is because of drug usage, which I agree. I am not saying that every drug must be legal, because some of it actually kills. However, we should focus on helping the individual, instead of just throwing them in a cage around real criminals. It all

A prosecutor looking for real justice, Adam Foss demonstrates just how effective rhetorical devices can be to persuade a population to defend the rights of others. When telling the story of how people end up in the criminal justice system, Foss tells “Even in our ‘worst.’ I saw...childhood trauma, victimization, poverty...interaction with the police…”(3:24) Many people tend to see people convicted of crimes as inhuman or lesser than us. However, Foss begins to humanize them. Moreover, he states that the reason these people commit crimes isn’t because of some violent, unfathomable reason, but rather because of their rough experiences earlier in life. To fix crime, people must step up and fix issues that cause crime, not throw people into a broken

It is important that the victim be allowed to express their emotional losses to all parties within the criminal justice system. " When we fail to listen to crime victims, we are in direct conflict with the very premise that our justice system was founded upon--fair, swift and equal justice, with punishments that are consistent with the

Throughout every state and county across the United States there are various means for offering assistance to victims of crime. Each municipality has its own victim advocacy program. For smaller areas such as rural counties they use the next organizational level up as their victim advocates. For the purpose of this paper I sat down with Ms. Mari Dennis of the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD). Ms. Dennis is employed as the Victim Advocacy Unit Coordinator and is embedded within the Investigations division of the department. CSPD employs four staff victim advocates and around 35 volunteer advocates.

According to some investigators, victims do not feel better following the presentation of their allocution evidence during the penalty phase of a capital trial. What these findings suggest is that VIS, fueled as they often are by expressions of pain, anger, resentment, and vengeance, mostly leave the offended party feeling dissatisfied. As such, the emotionally charged and largely negative content of this evidence is suspect for furthering the aims of meaningful victim justice (Arrigo & Williams, 2003, p.

Unlike the diversionary program, this program isn’t intended to offer offenders less punishment to their crimes, much less be attentive to their needs, instead, it seeks to offer victims the chance to encounter their offender and ask questions about the crime only they know the answers to. While equally important, the therapeutic restorative justice programs have been effective for victims to be able to heal and obtain answers to those troubling questions they may have for their offender. This has led to a program by Kim Book called the Victims Voices Heard Program that aims to specifically help only the victims of sexual violence or crimes that have taken place by people who know one another. The goal of this program is to heal victims from self-blame and from the fear that has been inflicted upon them. Miller later provides an example as to how the program has been effective for one offender and victim that proves the program to be of great assistance and

Victims can pursue one or even a combination of three distinct goals. The first is too see to it that hard-core offenders who act as predators are punished, The second is to use the justice process as leverage to compel lawbreakers to undergo rehabilitative treatment. The third possible aim is to get the court to order convicts to make restitution for any expenses arising from injuries and losses. Punishment is what comes to most people’s minds first, when considering what justice entails. Throughout history, people have always punished one another. However, they may disagree about their reasons for subjecting a wrongdoer to

Leading up to now, America has been a place where laws, crimes, and other stipulations have a cause and effect. Since America’s inception as a free land, in this land people are obligated to follow laws and orders directed by the United States Government. However, many follow the laws and become victims of the American Criminal Justice system. Hence, we have people who become victims of wrong convictions. Wrongful conviction is define as a person who is currently serving a sentence via incarceration for a crime they did not commit. After the discovery of innocence, the department of corrections system exonerates them. Moreover, wrongful convictions are prominent and the effects that comes with wrongful convictions in relation to people who are misidentified – that effect lingers and is detrimental (Irazola, Williamson, Stricker, & Niedzwiecki 2014).

It hits you in your gut. You first start to think of this person, this man who lost his family, who was accused of murdering his own wife, who spent decades in some horrible cell for a crime he did not commit. And then you think the other scary thought, how many other innocent people are behind bars, just waiting for the truth to help them out? The Innocence Project, whose task is to free the number of innocent people who are still behind bars and to improve the system responsible for their unfair imprisonment, has estimated that between 2.3 percent to 5 percent of all the prisoners in the US are innocent. With these numbers, you can count on as many as 120,000 innocent people that currently are in prison. How can our revered justice system manage to fail so frequently?

Outline and explain the three key goals victims can pursue through the criminal justice system.

A person who experiences a traumatic event may be expected to experience a range of psychological effects, and, for many years, it was assumed that these psychological effects would be the same regardless of the cause of the injury. However, a growing body of knowledge is demonstrating that the impact of criminal victimization is different than the impact of other types of injuries because the intent element makes a difference in how the victim perceives the harm. In addition, victims of different crimes may respond differently to victimization. The psychological effects of victimization are important because they can help guide the criminal justice system for how to interact with victims and how to make the process more victim-appropriate. For example, victims of violent crimes, like sexual assaults, may benefit more from a victim-centered criminal justice approach than victims of other types of crimes (Resick, 1987). However, one of the problems with the traditional approach to victimology is that it has distinguished between different groups of victims. Emerging research suggest that victim needs are similar across the entire spectrum of crime, particularly the victims' needs for information about the crime and the needs for financial restitution to make them whole (ten Boom & Kuijpers, 2012).

By reading the criminal Victimization, 2014 article it was a little surprising that there is not a lot of change comparer to what we actually see in the news today. I wasn’t aware that at some point men were more victimized then women. Now a day’s we tent to see more women maybe because we feel the need to share it more freely then men.

In the documentary Crime After Crime, Deborah Peagler suffered abuse from her intimate partner through her life. The abuse started in High School. When her mother introduced her to Oliver Wilson, his charming personality fooled everyone. Oliver forced her into prostitution to make money for him. When she refused, he beat her until she promised to sell herself. The beating gradationally evolved to bull whipping. In addition, all of this occurred during her junior and senior year in high school. Oliver felt it was his right to have ultimate control over Deborah, this fact is generally accepted in the society (Belknap 247). The male dominance, male authority over women is something taught to young children. It is sought to be the place of

Victims of crime, particularly those violent in nature, have their rights violated and experience exceedingly high level of trauma and stress (Appendix B, 2015). It is surprising then, that Criminal Justice Systems (CJS) around the world forgo many victims’ rights and provided limited space for them to interact with the system (Sarre, 1999). Rather systems are built around balancing the rights of offenders against the greater safety and need of the community whilst neglecting individual justice needs of the victims (Sarre, 1999). With limited rights and minimal involvement a victim often becomes a disposable utensil to the CJS (Clark, 2010). They are used by the courts to determine the ultimate truth so justice may be served, with no care for the damage that may be caused in the process and then disposed of the case is concluded (Braun, 2014). In 2011-2012 a victimisation survey revealed that 1.2 million Australians were victims of personal crimes, such as assault, robbery and sexual assault (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Of these victims, only half of the crimes were reported to the police (Australian Institution of Criminology, 2013). Such low reporting rates have been contributed in part to this notion of imbalance offender VS victims’ rights (Braun, 2014). Due to the sensitive nature of sexual crimes, the limited available evidence and victim rights, these crimes tend to carry the lowest reporting rates (Braun, 2014). During the latest Australian

The history of victimology travels further back in time than most would realize. The concept of the victim emerged from the many attempts of many societies and peoples to explain both the reasons behind victimization and the appropriate action to be taken as a result of it (Burgess et al., 2013). As a concept, it can be difficult to define victimology, since each individual defines the term differently. According to the text utilized for this class, victimology is defined as being the study of the victim, including the offender and society. It is also seen as being a social-structural way of viewing the relationships between crime and the law as well as the criminal and the victim (Burgess et al, 2013)..