The Victims' Rights Movement
The "victims' rights" movement began in a response to the spread of two beliefs. The first was the perception that the legal system was more concerned with the protection of the constitutional rights of criminal offenders and alleged offenders than they were the victims of their offenses. This was especially inflamed by numerous lawsuits alleging unconstitutional conditions in many U.S. jails and prisons, and a strong emphasis on the education and rehabilitation of those who were incarcerated, especially beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s. Advocates wanted to see affirmative help for crime victims to be at least as extensive as that provided to the offenders, and for victims to receive compensation from offenders whenever this was practicable. The second stimulus was the spread of the belief, bolstered by prominent stories in the media, that the number of released or paroled offenders returning to attack their original victims or victims' families was increasing, in some cases in retaliation for having reported the original offense.
Most state victims' rights amendments provide for the prosecutors to stay in touch with the victims and their families during all stages of prosecution, and to stay in touch with them post-conviction to advise them of events such as parole hearings, applications for pardons or other forms of executive clemency or relief, and similar news. They may require that any pay received by an offender while incarcerated go at least in part to compensate the victims, and that royalties to any creative works such as books, screenplays or similar works created by the offender judged to be derived from the events of the offense be assigned to the victims (though these latter requirements have been challenged as a violation of the constitutional guarantee of free speech).
Read more about this topic: Victims' Rights Amendment
Famous quotes containing the words rights and/or movement:
“Assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every bit as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro.... this is no more a man’s world than it is a white world.”
—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, African American civil rights organization. SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)
“What had really caused the women’s movement was the additional years of human life. At the turn of the century women’s life expectancy was forty-six; now it was nearly eighty. Our groping sense that we couldn’t live all those years in terms of motherhood alone was “the problem that had no name.” Realizing that it was not some freakish personal fault but our common problem as women had enabled us to take the first steps to change our lives.”
—Betty Friedan (20th century)