Social Movements: Taking Up the Victims Cause

Social Movements: Taking Up the Victims’ Cause

Aside from suffering harm at the hands of criminals, victims as a group may have very little else in com- mon. They differ in terms of age, sex, race/ethnic- ity, religion, social class, political orientation, and many other important characteristics. Therefore, it has been difficult to organize them into self-help groups and to harness their energies into a political force for change. Despite these obstacles, a crime victims’ movement emerged during the 1970s. It has developed into a broad alliance of activists, support groups, and advocacy organizations that lobbies for increased rights and expanded services, demonstrates at trials, maintains a variety of web- sites, educates the public, trains criminal justice professionals and caregivers, sets up research insti- tutes and information clearinghouses, designs and evaluates experimental policies, and holds confer- ences to share experiences and develop innovative programs.

The guiding principle holding this diverse coa- lition together is the belief that victims who other- wise would feel powerless and enraged can attain a sense of empowerment and regain control over their lives through practical assistance, mutual sup- port, and involvement in the criminal justice pro- cess (see Friedman, 1985; Smith, 1985; Smith, Sloan, and Ward, 1990; and Weed, 1995).

The victims’ movement has greatly benefited from the work of advocates, who, by definition,

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speak in behalf of someone else, especially in legal matters. Originally, advocates were referred to as “ombudsmen.” Rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women were the first to empower their clients in the early 1970s by furnishing them with the services of dedicated and knowledgeable people to consult with who understood how the criminal justice process worked and how to make the system more responsive to their clients’ needs. These pio- neers in advocacy usually were former victims who knew firsthand what the injured parties were going through. A Florida police department and a Chicago legal services organization were the first components of the justice system to routinely pro- vide advocates in the mid-1970s. Shortly afterward, prosecutors’ victim–witness assistance programs (VWAPs) and family courts (responsible for assign- ing guardians ad litem to represent the best interests of abused children) followed suit. In addition to survivors and volunteers, professionals in the help- ing fields (such as social workers, nurses, psycholo- gists, psychiatrists, counselors, and lawyers) began to offer their specialized skills. Agencies provided short-term training in crisis intervention techniques and practical assistance with financial claims, court proceedings, and referrals to medical, mental health, and legal services. Courses and career preparation became available on college campuses. Two forms of advocacy developed: Case advocacy involves a one-on-one relationship with a client who needs specific assistance and focused guidance for a short period of time. System advocacy involves repre- senting an entire group as part of an organized lob- bying campaign to bring about procedural reforms that will ease their plight (Dussich, 2009a).

Major Sources of Inspiration, Guidance, and Support Several older and broader social move- ments have greatly influenced the growth and orienta- tion of the victims’ movement. The most important contributions have been made by the law-and-order movement, the women’s movement, and the civil rights movement.

The law-and-order movement of the 1960s raised concerns about the plight of victims of street crimes of violence and theft. Alarmed by surging

crime rates, conservatives adopted the “crime con- trol” perspective and campaigned for hard-line, get- tough policies. They insisted that the criminal jus- tice system was society’s first line of defense against internal enemies who threatened chaos and destruc- tion. The “thin blue line” of law enforcement needed to be strengthened. A willingness to tolerate too much misbehavior was viewed as the problem, and a crackdown on social and political deviants who disobeyed society’s rules and disrupted the lives of conventional people was offered as the solution. To win over people who might have been reluctant to grant more power to gov- ernment agencies—police, prosecutors, and prison authorities—they argued that the average American should be more worried about becoming a victim than about being falsely accused, mistakenly con- victed, and unjustly punished (Hook, 1972). Con- servative crime control advocates pictured the scales of justice as being unfairly tilted in favor of the “bad guys” at the expense of the “good guys”—the innocent, law-abiding citizens and their allies on the police force and in the prosecutor’s office. In a smooth-running justice system that they envi- sioned, punishment would be swift and sure. Attor- neys for defendants would no longer be able to take advantage of practices that were dismissed as “loop- holes” and “technicalities” that undermined the government’s efforts to arrest, detain, convict, imprison, deter, incapacitate, and impose retribu- tion on wrongdoers.

“Permissiveness” (unwarranted leniency) and any “coddling of criminals” would end: More offenders would be locked up for longer periods of time, and fewer would be granted bail, proba- tion, or parole. Liberals and civil libertarians who opposed these policies as being too repressive and overly punitive were branded as “pro-criminal” and “antivictim” (see Miller, 1973; and Carrington, 1975).

In contrast, liberal activists in the women’s movement have focused their energies since the late 1960s on aiding one group of victims in partic- ular: females who were harmed by males and then failed to receive the support they deserved from the male-dominated criminal justice system. Feminists

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launched both an antirape and an antibattering movement. The antirape movement set up the first rape crisis centers in Berkeley, California, and Washington, D.C., in 1972. These centers were not just places of aid and comfort in a time of pain and confusion. They also were rallying sites for outreach efforts to those who were suffering in isolation, meeting places for consciousness-raising groups exploring the patriarchal cultural traditions that encouraged males to subjugate females, and hubs for political organizing to change laws and policies (see Rose, 1977; Largen, 1981; and Schechter, 1982). Some antirape activists went on to protest the widespread problem of sexual harassment on the street, uniting behind the slogan “Take back the night” (see Lederer, 1980).

Other feminists helped organize battered women’s shelters. They established the first “safe house” in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1974. Campaigns to end battering paralleled activities to combat rape in a number of ways. Both projects were initiated for the most part by former victims who viewed their plight as an outgrowth of larger societal pro- blems and institutional arrangements, rather than as personal troubles stemming from their own indi- vidual shortcomings. Both sought to empower women by confronting established male authority, challenging existing procedures, providing peer support and advocacy, and devising alternative places to turn to in a time of need. The overall analysis that originally guided these pro-victim efforts was that male versus female offenses (such as rape, wife beating, sexual harassment in the streets and at work, and incest at home) pose a threat to all women and slows progress toward equality between the sexes. The gravest dangers are faced by women who are socially disadvantaged because of racial discrimination and economic inse- curity. According to this philosophy, girls and women victimized by boys and men cannot count on the privileged males at the helm of criminal jus- tice agencies to lead the struggle to effectively pro- tect or assist them—instead, women must empower each other (see Brownmiller, 1975).