This report examines the range of victim rights legislation across the United States in order to assess the effect these laws have on the work of local criminal justice agencies.
This report assesses the difficulties faced by criminal justice officials and prosecutors by the expansion of the legal rights of crime victims by State legislatures. In order to analyze whether local criminal justice agencies have the needed resources to work with crime victims throughout a case so that victims may exercise their newly expanded rights, the authors examined a vast array of victim rights legislation throughout the United States. Data was collected through mail-in surveys with 396 prosecutor's offices nationwide and by conducting in-depth telephone interviews with officials from prosecution, police, court, victim services, probation, and public defenders organizations in six jurisdictions in Wisconsin and North Carolina, two States which passed victims rights statutes in 1998. Additionally, researchers collected samples of 150 cases from prosecutor files before and 150 cases after legislative changes. Taken together, the data indicated that most prosecutors believed that the new victims rights laws imposed significant financial costs on their offices and other criminal justice agencies, through the need to increase their staffs and the need to spend additional monies in the area of notification. Additional resources did not always accompany the new legislation. Many prosecutors indicated that they believed the new statutes also affected court outcomes. The researchers conclude, noting that despite receiving invitations to exercise their rights in the mail, a high proportion of victims do not respond in order to exercise their rights. Appendix of tables