NCJ Number
109242
Journal
Journal of the National Prison Project Issue: 14 Dated: (Winter 1987) Pages: 9-11
Date Published
1987
Length
3 pages
Annotation
An examination of the history of the prisoners' rights and victims' rights movements and the issues which drive them suggests that they can benefit from one another.
Abstract
In the late 1960's and throughout the 1970's, prisoners gained an unprecedented amount of legal rights through the efforts of civil rights attorneys, supportive citizen groups, and inmates themselves. In recent years, attorneys, citizen groups, and crime victims have forged a victims' rights movement that has significant similarities with the prisoners' rights movement. Prisoners and crime victims, for instance, are both seeking a participatory voice in the criminal justice process. Howard Zehr (1985) suggests that both victims and offenders need empowerment in the criminal justice process. A crucial aspect of the process is lessening reliance on incarceration as a response to crime and the development of sentencing that simultaneously benefits the victim and the offender. What is required is the merging of three goals: crime victim restitution, victim and offender reparation, and jail and prison population reduction. 11 footnotes.