Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongs

Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongs PDF

Author: Vera Bergelson

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009-08-18

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0804772436

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"Don't blame the victim" is a cornerstone maxim of Anglo-American jurisprudence, but should the law generally ignore a victim's behavior in determining a defendant's liability? Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongs criticizes the current criminal law approach and outlines a more fair, coherent, and efficient set of rules to recognize that victims sometimes co-author their own losses or injuries. Evaluating a number of controversial cases involving euthanasia, sadomasochism, date rape, battered wives, and "innocent" aggressors, Vera Bergelson builds a theoretical foundation for reform. Her approach to comparative criminal liability takes into account the actions of both the perpetrator and the victim and offers a unitary explanation for consent, self-defense, and provocation. This innovative book supplies a practical and coherent mechanism for evaluating the impact of a victim's conduct on a perpetrator's liability in a variety of circumstances, including those that are now artificially excluded from comparative analysis.

The Wrong Victim

The Wrong Victim PDF

Author: Allison Brennan

Publisher: MIRA

Published: 2022-04-26

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0369717791

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From New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan comes a gripping new thriller. A lethal attack with no clear motive…and a killer dead-set on keeping the truth buried. A bomb explodes on a sunset charter cruise out of Friday Harbor at the height of tourist season and kills everyone on board. Now this fishing and boating community is in shock and asking who would commit such a heinous crime—the largest act of mass murder in the history of the San Juan Islands. Was the explosion an act of domestic terrorism, or was one of the dead the primary target? That is the first question Special Agent Matt Costa, Detective Kara Quinn and the rest of the FBI team need to answer, but they have few clues and no witnesses. Accused of putting profits before people after leaking fuel endangered an environmentally sensitive preserve, the West End Charter company may itself have been the target. As Matt and his team get closer to answers, they find one of their own caught in the crosshairs of a determined killer. Don’t miss THE MISSING WITNESS, the brand-new page-turning thriller from New York Times bestselling author Allison Brennan! A Quinn & Costa Thriller Book 1: The Third to Die Book 2: Tell No Lies Book 3: The Wrong Victim Book 4: Seven Girls Gone Book 5: The Missing Witness

With Justice For Some

With Justice For Some PDF

Author: George P. Fletcher

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 1995-01-20

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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A powerful examination of what's wrong with our criminal justice system and what needs to be done to fix it.

The Victims’ Rights Movement

The Victims’ Rights Movement PDF

Author: Michael Vitiello

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1479820741

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Outlines the successes and failures of the movement to support survivors of violence The Victims’ Rights Movement (VRM) has been one of the most meaningful criminal justice reforms in the United States. Every state and the federal government has adopted major VRM laws to enact protections for victims and increase criminal sanctions, and the movement has received support from politicians of all backgrounds. Despite recognition of its excesses, the movement remains an important force in the criminal justice arena. The Victims' Rights Movement offers a measured overview of the successes and the failures of the VRM. Among its widely acknowledged accomplishments are expanded resources to help victims deal with trauma, greater sensitivity to sexual assault victims in many jurisdictions, and increased chances of victims receiving restitution from perpetrators of harm. Conversely, the movement has led to excessive punishment for many defendants and destruction of defendants’ families. It has exacerbated racial inequality in the imposition of the death penalty and criminal sentencing generally, and falsely promises “closure” to crime victims and their families. Michael Vitiello considers whether the VRM serves those injured by crime well by focusing on “victimhood.” He urges a reframing of the movement to fight for universal health care and limits on access to weapons—two policies that would reduce the number of victims and help those who do become victims of crime.

Rights for Victims of Crime

Rights for Victims of Crime PDF

Author: Irvin Waller

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1442207078

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When the victims of injustice lose faith in their justice system, the crime they've endured cuts only deeper, adding insult to injury. The time has come to face the truth that most victims of crime will not have their needs met and often won't experience our systems of justice as just. This short book makes its readers experts in advocating rights for victims of crime. It empowers taxpayers, voters and (potential) victims of crime to make the case to rebalance justice and support victims. Written for the millions of victims of crime and their friends and families, it helps to transform an antiquated system of criminal and civil justice into a modern system that is just and fair, shifting from neglect to respect and support. While some laws in the USA and elsewhere do support victims by providing assistance, compensation, and protection from the accused, this book also sheds a harsh light upon their inadequate implementation. Police services must catch crooks but make victims their client. Courts must balance rights for defendants and victims. Services for women, children and elderly victims must be adequately funded. Restitution from offenders must be ordered and collected, not overlooked. Fair compensation from the state must change from a secret to a given. The prevention of victimization must be the budget priority not mass incarceration. Despite the speeches and the United Nations norms, governments still leave most victims of crime without basic information, support, and assistance, let alone respect and remedies in courts. If you are not yet one of those victims of crime, social responsibility requires you to ensure that your country's systems of justice are fair to those who are and for them, this book provides an answer.

Victims in the War on Crime

Victims in the War on Crime PDF

Author: Markus Dirk Dubber

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 0814771416

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Two phenomena have shaped American criminal law for the past thirty years: the war on crime and the victims' rights movement. As incapacitation has replaced rehabilitation as the dominant ideology of punishment, reflecting a shift from an identification with defendants to an identification with victims, the war on crime has victimized offenders and victims alike. What we need instead, Dubber argues, is a system which adequately recognizes both victims and defendants as persons. Victims in the War on Crime is the first book to provide a critical analysis of the role of victims in the criminal justice system as a whole. It also breaks new ground in focusing not only on the victims of crime, but also on those of the war on victimless crime. After first offering an original critique of the American penal system in the age of the crime war, Dubber undertakes an incisive comparative reading of American criminal law and the law of crime victim compensation, culminating in a wide-ranging revision that takes victims seriously, and offenders as well. Dubber here salvages the project of vindicating victims' rights for its own sake, rather than as a weapon in the war against criminals. Uncovering the legitimate core of the victims' rights movement from underneath existing layers of bellicose rhetoric, he demonstrates how victims' rights can help us build a system of American criminal justice after the frenzy of the war on crime has died down.

Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court

Victims' Rights and Advocacy at the International Criminal Court PDF

Author: T. Markus Funk

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0199941467

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North American law has been transformed in ways unimaginable before 9/11. Laws now authorise and courts have condoned indefinite detention without charge on secret evidence, mass secret surveillance, and targeted killing of U.S. citizens, suggesting a shift in the cultural currency of a liberal form of legality to authoritarian legality. This book demonstrates that extreme measures have been consistently embraced in politics, scholarship, and public opinion in a specific belief that 9/11 was the harbinger of a new order of terror.

Justice

Justice PDF

Author: Nicholas Wolterstorff

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-05-02

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0691146306

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Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

Imagining a Greater Justice

Imagining a Greater Justice PDF

Author: Samuel H. Pillsbury

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-11

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0429756453

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Even for violent crime, justice should mean more than punishment. By paying close attention to the relational harms suffered by victims, this book develops a concept of relational justice for survivors, offenders and community. Relational justice looks beyond traditional rules of legal responsibility to include the social and emotional dimensions of human experience, opening the way for a more compassionate, effective and just response to crime. The book’s chapters follow a journey from victim experiences of violence to community healing from violence. Early chapters examine the relational harms inflicted by the worst wrongs, the moral responsibility of wrongdoers and common mistakes made in judging wrongdoing. Particular attention is paid here to sexual violence. The book then moves to questions of just punishment: proper sentencing by judges, mandatory sentences approved by the public, and the realities of contemporary incarceration, focusing particularly on solitary confinement and sexual violence. In its remaining chapters, the book looks at changes brought by the victims' rights movement and victim needs that current law does not, and perhaps cannot meet. It then addresses possibilities for offender change and challenges for majority America in addressing race discrimination in criminal justice. The book concludes with a look at how individuals might live out the ideals of a greater—relational—justice. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.