This year more than 20 million Americans will become victims of crime. Very few will get the help they need to get their lives back on track. Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime presents a new approach, designed to help victims rebuild their lives now being piloted from Vermont to California by police chiefs, prosecutors, corrections officials, victim advocates and community leaders. Drawing on more than 30 years of criminal justice experience, including almost 8 years as executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, author Susan Herman explains why justice for all requires more than holding offenders accountable it means addressing victims' three basic needs: to be safe, to recover from the trauma of the crime, and regain control of their lives. With guiding principles and practical examples of how to respond to victims of any kind of crime, Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime provides a roadmap for everyone who wants to pursue this new vision of justice.

This book analyses the rights of crime victims within a human rights paradigm, and describes the inconsistencies resulting from attempts to introduce the procedural rights of victims within a criminal justice system that views crime as a matter between the state and the offender, and not as one involving the victim. To remedy this problem, the book calls for abandoning the concept of crime as an infringement of a state’s criminal laws and instead reinterpreting it as a violation of human rights. The state’s right to punish the offender would then be replaced by the rights of victims to see those responsible for violating their human rights convicted and punished and by the rights of offenders to be treated as accountable agents.

In recent years far more attention has been paid to victims of crime both in terms of awareness of the effect of crime upon their lives, and in changes that have been made to the criminal justice system to improve their rights and treatment. This process seems set to continue, with legislative plans announced to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of the victim. This latest book in the Cambridge Criminal Justice Series brings together leading authorities in the field to review the role of the victim in the criminal justice system in the context of these developments.

Criticizes the balance of justice in the American justice system, discussing the rights and implementation of the rights granted to victims of crime, and describing ways to improve the system and better support victims with assistance, compensation, and protection from the accused.

Justice for Victims brings together the world’s leading scholars in the fields of study surrounding victimization in a pioneering international collection. This book focuses on the current study of victims of crime, combining both legal and social-scientific perspectives, articulating both in new directions and questioning whether victims really do have more rights in our modern world. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach, covering large-scale (political) victimization, terrorist victimization, sexual victimization and routine victimization. Split into three sections, this book provides in-depth coverage of: victims' rights, transitional justice and victims' perspectives, and trauma, resilience and justice. Victims' rights are conceptualised in the human rights framework and discussed in relation to supranational, international and regional policies. The transitional justice section covers victims of war from those caught between peace and justice, as well as post-conflict justice. The final section focuses on post-traumatic stress, connecting psychological and anthropological perceptions in analysing collective violence, mass victimization and trauma. This book addresses challenging and new issues in the field of victimology and the study of transitional and restorative justice. As such, it will be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students interested in the fields of victimology, transitional justice, restorative justice and trauma work.