Victim Services History

History of Victims’ Rights and Services

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The history of victims rights started over 30 years ago with the Modern Crime Victims’ Rights Movement. They aspired to improve the treatment of victims in the justice system. Since then, this movement has become one of the most successful civil liberties movement of the recent times. Over the years many services have emerged to help victims deal with what happened, some also provide funds as well as housing. With the growing protection and services to crime victims, over the years they have started to play a bigger part in the criminal justice process. They play key roles in identification of suspects and as well as getting criminals convicted.
When these organizations were first thought of, victims didn’t have very many rights. They didn’t have protective custody, nor did they have funding for them either. There are also services out there now they educate victims and other people to prevent them from being victims. The Victim Support Services, founded in 1975, by Lola Linstad after her daughter was abducted and murdered. She founded this service in order to support crime victims with advocacy, education, and awareness. This is one of the oldest victim services that are still around. Victim services have been incorporated all over the country serving victims and helping them with gaining rights. In 2004, the Crime Victims’ Rights Act was granted. This gave victims more rights such as the right to protection from the accused, the right to notification, the right not to be excluded from proceedings, the right to speak at criminal justice proceedings, and a few others. This was big for Victims’ Rights Movements and Organizaions. This therefore lead to a growing role of victims in the Criminal Justice process
Crime Victims have been able to help much more with the identification of the suspects, as well as helping police to not falsely identify criminals. Before the days of protective custody, many crime victims use to be afraid or too uncomfortable to testify due to feeling unsafe of the accused. Services such even the Witness Protective Program have emerged where they go through the trouble of changing your name and identification. All these things have influenced the decisions of crime victims for the positive and have made them feel safer. With a greater influence with the crime victims gains cooperation, without that it makes a case hard against a criminal. The role of crime victims today is very different than in our earlier history. The crime victim once have a more prominent part in directing the progress of the criminal justice. Whereas today, participation in the contemporary criminal process puts numerous burdens on the crime victim. Many of them not only feel victimized by the crime but by the process as well. That tends to make them increasingly fail to help law enforcement. Crime victims not only help in the courtroom but also have proved worth in law enforcement investigations, with trailing suspects, identifying suspects, and even locating