Victims Don't Matter

 

Two letters to the editor in a recent issue of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, seemingly unrelated, caught my eye, because they are in fact related.   

In a March 3 letter headlined "Nevada failing to provide critical services," Dina Titus, minority leader of the state Senate, pointed out the state=s failure to provide adequate social services for things like education, health care and the like.  In the other letter, "Blaming the victim," Patricia Thacker, secretary of The Community Coalition for Victim's Rights, responded to a statement attributed to a police sergeant who denounced most victims of crime, alleging that most of them "are just criminals themselves when it comes right down to it."

So what's the connection?  In order to arrive at a rational and sensible response to crime we need to go beyond knee-jerk reactions and simple-minded solutions (e.g., "Three Strikes and You're Out" ).  We owe it to all the victims to come up with something better. And speaking of victims, what ever happened to the "victims rights movement"?  What ever happened to all the concern, starting in the late 1970s, about victims and their plight?  Marc Klaas (father of Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped from her own bedroom and brutally murdered a few years ago, and whose case helped in part justify the "Three Strikes" legislation in California), has commented at length about our draconian response to youth crime and how it does little for crime victims and their families.  If anyone should know, Mr. Klaus should!  He noted that "The trouble with America's children is America's adults...America's current focus on stronger sentencing is a simple solution to a much more complex problem.  We are kidding ourselves if we think we can declare victory by treating youthful offenders like adults...if other families are to be sparred the pain that mine has endured, policymakers need to look beyond the death penalty or prison sentences."

Aside from a few token measures to provide various forms of assistance for victims (e.g., compensation for material losses, mental health counseling), nothing much has been done since the much heralded "victims rights movement" began in the 1970s.  As one critic put it, millions of crime victims have been manipulated to serve narrow political agendas, that most of the laws passed during this time have done little to really help these victims and that many forms of serious victimization - especially corporate and white collar crime - have been ignored. 

Another review of victim’s rights programs came to the conclusion that, other than shelters for battered women, the various programs that have been offered have done little or nothing to reduce victimization - and even shelters have their limits on reducing domestic violence.  These failures include such popular responses as: victim assistance programs, police-victim re-contact programs (where the police make contact with victims after the crime has occurred, offer sympathy, ask whether they need any assistance, etc.), direct victim compensation programs, expanding the victim=s voice in the courtroom (e.g., victim impact statement), mandatory arrest in domestic violence programs.  Evaluations of these and other programs have found them to be unsuccessful in reducing overall crime, reducing the suffering of the victims and compensating them for their loses and reducing the overall fear of crime.  After three decades of such efforts, says one critic, they are "victims still."

Part of the problem stems from the utter contempt many criminal justice officials and politicians have for many crime victims (as revealed by the comments from the metro officer noted above), with some using derogatory terms for both victims and offenders, often blaming the victims for what happened (especially women who get raped and are victims of domestic violence).  And over and over again politicians, including criminal justice officials, have capitalized on simple slogans calling for victims rights, while privately not giving a damn about them and supporting legislation that offers little or no help for victims, but plenty of help for themselves.