NCJ Number
102556
Date Published
1986
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Crime victims should be compensated through the remedies available in civil law as well as through the criminal justice system, if that combination of approaches best responds to the victims' interests.
Abstract
Maintaining a strict division between civil law, which focuses on the public interest, is not always appropriate. In fact, this division did not exist in the earlier history of western legal systems. Providing restitution is sometimes the best way to respond to the rights of crime victims. The perceptions of these rights and of the meaning of victimization have changed over time. Political issues, social values, and psychological factors all shape the concepts embodied in the laws that define crimes. The treatment of women in the history of criminal law illustrates some of these points. Patriarchal concepts underlay western legal systems, which therefore placed disproportionate power in males and victimized women in areas like family law. More recent reforms of laws and of rules of evidence have begun to confront the victimization of females by the legal system. The feminist movement that pushed for these reforms has also stimulated consideration of the deeper questions of how crime victims can best receive redress based on concepts of both civil and criminal law.