NCJ Number
181673
Journal
Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 39 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2000 Pages: 58-78
Date Published
February 2000
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article examines Aftermath, a self-help and counseling organization established by and for the families of serious offenders.
Abstract
Aftermath defines its members as “the other victims of crime.” This raises important and interesting questions not only about procedures for establishing moral identity but also about the reach and impact of crime. Serious crime affects and disturbs almost all whom it touches--victims and survivors proper; secondary victims, and witnesses--and is being claimed with increasing frequency, police officers, court officers, prison officers, jurors and even offenders themselves. Aftermath represents yet another addition to that roll. The offender’s own immediate social circle, including his family, can become deeply embroiled in the havoc that crime leaves behind. Serious crime can even contaminate its victims. The very presence of the seemingly blameless victim can endanger the bystander’s belief in a just world, in the powerful presupposition that there must be an overarching moral agency in human affairs which rewards and protects the virtuous and punishes and restrains the wrongdoer. Thus, Aftermath members do not readily disclose the nature of their meetings and the group has little of the righteous anger, vociferous campaigning and denunciation of outsiders that beset the politics of other survivors’ groups. Figures, notes, references