Legal clinics helping crime victims have grown out of the recognition that crime victims without legal counsel are often unable to exercise their rights. Slowing that progress, however, is uncertainty about how to define success in a legal clinic’s representation of crime victims, and how to apply that definition in evaluating whether clinics have represented victims successfully in particular matters. These are just the types of questions a conceptual model is designed to help answer. National Institute of Justice-backed research offers the first conceptual model for aligning victim legal services with desired results and assessing effectiveness in terms of actual client outcomes. The research also provides a roadmap for evaluating whether and how case outcomes are benefiting their crime victim clients in meaningful ways.
Helping Crime Victim Legal Clinics Help Their Clients by Defining and Measuring for Successful Outcomes
NCJ Number
305690
Date Published
2023
Abstract