THE DISCOVERY, DECLINE, AND REDISCOVERY OF CRIME VICTIMS
Each law that prohibits a certain act as being harm- ful defines the wrongdoer as a criminal subject to punishment and at the same time specifies that the injured party is a victim deserving some sort of redress. The laws forbidding what are now called street crimes—murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, and theft—can be traced back several thousand years. Hence, victims of interpersonal vio- lence and theft were “discovered” ages ago, in the sense that they were formally identified and offi- cially recognized.
Scholars of the history of the legal system report that in past centuries victims played a leading role in the resolution of criminal matters. To dis- courage retaliation by victims and their families— acts that could lead to endless feuding if offenders and their kin counterattacked—societies in simpler times established direct repayment schemes. Legal codes around the world enabled injured parties to receive money or valuables from wrongdoers to compensate for the pain, suffering, and losses they endured.
This process of victim-oriented justice pre- vailed mostly in small villages engaged in farming, where social relations were based on personal obli- gations, clear-cut family ties, strong religious beliefs, and sacred traditions. But the injured party’s role diminished as industrialization and urbanization brought about business relations that were volun- tary, secular, impersonal, rationalized, and contrac- tual. Over the centuries, victims lost control over the process of determining the fate of the offenders who hurt them. Instead, the local governmental structure dominated judicial proceedings and extracted fines from convicts, physically punished them, or even executed them. The seriousness of the wounds and losses inflicted upon victims were of importance only for determining the charges and penalties wrongdoers faced upon conviction. Restoring injured parties to the condition they were in before the crimes occurred was no longer the main concern. In fact, the recovery of damages
became a separate matter that was handled in another arena (civil court) according to a different set of rules (tort law) after criminal proceedings were concluded (Schafer, 1968).
Historically, in the United States and in other parts of the world, the situations of victims followed the same evolutionary path from being at the center of the legal process to being relegated to the side- lines. When the 13 American colonies were settled initially by immigrants from Great Britain in the 1600s, the earliest penal codes were based on reli- gious values as well as English common law. During the colonial era, police forces and public prosecutors had not yet been established. Victims were the key decision makers within the rudimen- tary criminal justice system and were its direct ben- eficiaries. They conducted their own investigations, paid for warrants to have sheriffs make arrests, and hired private attorneys to indict and prosecute their alleged attackers. Convicts were forced to repay those they harmed up to three times the value of the goods they had damaged or stolen (Schafer, 1968).
But after the American Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, crimes were reconceptualized as hostile acts directed against the authority of the government, which was defined as the representative of the peo- ple. Addressing the suffering imposed upon indivi- duals was deemed to be less important than dealing with the symbolic threat to the social order posed by lawbreakers. Public prosecutors, acting on behalf of the state and in the name of the entire society, took over the powers and responsibilities formerly exercised by victims. Federal, state, and county (district) attorneys were granted the discre- tion to decide whether to press charges against defendants and what sanctions to ask judges to impose upon convicts.
The goals of deterring crime through punish- ment, protecting society by incapacitating danger- ous people in prisons or through executions, and rehabilitating transgressors through treatment came to overshadow victims’ demands to be restored to financial, emotional, and physical health.
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Over the last two centuries, the government increasingly has assumed the obligation of providing jail detainees and prison inmates with food, cloth- ing, housing, supervision, medical care, recreational opportunities, schooling, job training, psychological counseling, and legal representation—while leaving victims to fend for themselves. As they lost control over “their” cases, their role dwindled to just two contributions: filing a complaint with the police that initiated an investigation and, if necessary, tes- tifying for the prosecution as another piece of evi- dence in the state’s presentation of damning facts against the accused.
When plea negotiation (a settlement worked out by the prosecutor and the defense attorney) replaced a trial as the most common means of resolving criminal cases, victims lost their last opportunity to actively participate in the process by presenting their firsthand experiences on the witness stand to a jury. Victims rarely were included and consulted when the police and prosecution team decided upon their strategies and goals. To add insult to injury, often they were not even informed of the outcomes of “their” cases. Thor- oughly marginalized, victims frequently sensed that they had been taken advantage of twice: first by the offender and then by a system that ostensibly was set up to help them but in reality seemed more intent on satisfying the needs of its core agen- cies and key officials (see Schafer, 1968; McDonald, 1977; and Davis, Kunreuther, and Connick, 1984).
After centuries of neglect, those on the receiv- ing end of violence and theft were given renewed attention and, in effect, were rediscovered during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A small number of self-help advocates, social scientists, crusading journalists, enlightened criminal justice officials, and responsive lawmakers helped channel the public’s attention to a festering problem: the total disregard of the needs and wants of victims. Through publications, meetings, rallies, and petition drives, these activists promoted their mes- sage: that victims were forgotten figures in the criminal justice process whose best interests were systematically overlooked but merited attention. Discussion and debate emerged during the late
1960s and has intensified throughout the following decades over why this injustice existed and what could be done about it. Various groups with their own distinct agendas formed coalitions and mobilized to campaign for reforms. As a result, new laws favorable to victims are being passed, and criminal justice policies are being overhauled.
A number of distinct groups and constituen- cies are responsible for this ongoing process of rediscovery. They include a wide variety of social movements; elected officials; commercial interests; the news media; and scholars, researchers, and advocates.