NCJ Number
177987
Date Published
1994
Length
745 pages
Annotation
This book examines the legislation supporting victims’ rights in more than 40 States.
Abstract
The book considers public disenchantment with the American criminal justice system and examines both the ancient and more modern history of law enforcement. It examines the victims’ rights movement and concludes that it cannot be strictly classified as a “social movement” but is a “policy movement.” It examines theories regarding street-level bureaucracies and the “opinion-circuit” of policy formulation in the context of their applications to the victims’ rights movement. It also describes cases of individuals and groups that have joined “the politics of dissatisfaction” with “the opinion circuit” to effect public policy reformulation. The book concludes that clients have been the inspiration for change in the street-level bureaucracy and that those changes combined with the opinion-circuit are the key to explaining and understanding the reform taking place in the American criminal justice system. Notes, appendixes, bibliography, index