NCJ Number
180494
Date Published
1999
Length
20 pages
Annotation
The criminal justice system often does not deal adequately with crimes against children, and many States and the Federal Government have taken steps to enhance offender accountability and the proper treatment of children as victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system.
Abstract
Recommendations to enhance the treatment of children as victims and witnesses are presented in two sections. In the first section on offender accountability, the recommendations are to reform murder statutes to ensure child murderers can be effectively prosecuted, to adopt evidence rules to ensure that juries in child molestation cases can hear evidence that the defendant has committed other crimes, and to adopt evidence rules to ensure juries hear credible out-of-court statements made by children about abuse. In the second section on effective courtroom procedures for child witnesses, the recommendations are to speed up trials involving children as victims and/or witnesses, to provide privacy protection to children who are crime victims, to assume children will tell the truth, to minimize the number of times a child is interviewed, to provide children who testify in court with help from multidisciplinary child abuse teams, and to allow special procedures for child testimony on the rare occasions when a child cannot testify in the normal manner.