Research Paper on "Crime Victims Rights Act of 2004"

Research Paper 6 pages (2182 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Victim's Right Act Of 2004

The Crime Victims' Rights Act, part of the Justice for All Act of 2004, enumerates the rights afforded to victims in federal criminal cases. The Act grants victims the following rights does things like giving them the privilege or the right to be protected from the person that might be accusing the victim. This act also grants the person or the victim the right to be notified just in case something happens. Another thing this act does is provide notification for the victim so that they will know what is going on. It also does further things such as not excluding them from the proceedings or the trials that could be going on. This act proves to be a real benefit for the victim because it also gives them the right to restitution not to mention the privilege to be able to consult with a prosecuting attorney. Basically, this act boils down to the right for the victim to be treated with equality, and respect for all of the victims' self-respect. Many do believe that the circumstances have become less stressful for the victims' ever since the act has been passed. It really gives them a chance to have their voices heard before the courts. With that said, this essay will discuss the role of the Identifying the facts as protection from the person been accused to obtain notifications of the hearings, future minutes and also the future parole hearings. As talked about earlier, the victims are able to enjoy the fact that their rights will not ever become absent from none of the proceedings (except the court makes a decision otherwise). In the past, the victims were denied this right. They did not have the rights to be heard at release, plea, probation, or sentencing hearings. However, with this law coming into practice, all of that changed. Rights to be able to talk with the governments attorney, and to a timely restitution where something that they could not do in the past but now with the rules changing and the introduction of the act being implemented, it is now possible. Many law experts really feel that these eight rights' have been fruitful and with the support of the government. (Boland, M.L., 2009). With that being said, the routine activity theory can challenge the impact of the application of the Victim's Right Act of 2004

Routine Activity Theory

Routine Activity Theory basically mentions that in order for a crime to be done, three exact standards will have to be involved in the first place. Routine activity theory principle is that crime is comparatively unaffected by social causes for instance inequality poverty, and unemployment. All of these standards are that there will need to be an offender that is motivated, a suitable target, in addition to the deficiency of a guardian that is supposed to be capable. This theory is what makes the attempts to display that crime rates are not usually affected by instruction changes for instance economic recessions and joblessness rates. While investigating crime rates that were occurring way after World War II it was exposed that even though America was thriftily flourishing related to the pre-war depression, rates of crime rates were rising, and did not display any signs of going down. The overall existence of a person plays a significant role in the description of the routine activity theory. Actually, the research shows that the more one a person is unprotected to criminal conduct in their everyday way of life, the more likely that this person would go out and commit some criminal activity (Michael, 2007). A lot of the experiments and surveys have been done in order to test this theory. In the process, they make the attempts to discover empirical evidence which supports the idea of the Routine Activity Theory, mainly that macro social causes have no real part in the action of corruption as personal existence does.

How does this theory impact the Victim's Right Act of 2004? A theory, in order to be considered useable, would have to be empirically valid. The rights of the victim in the act also have to be valid. This validity is basically done by evaluating the theory in diverse conditions using trials to either find some kind of proof that the theory is right, or try and figure out if there is some kind of gaps in the theory. This theory has an impact on the Victim's Right Act of 2004 because it is saying that things like the loss of jobs are not causing crime to go up. However, this is not a valid statement. Research shows that when there is a loss of job crime does appear to increase. For the victim it is unfortunate because of the crime that is done against them.

A woman named Elizabeth Groff had done some testing in regards to the activity theory, and documented the things that she had discovered in her editorial "Simulation for Theory Testing and Experimentation: An Example Using Routine Activity Theory and Street Robbery." She makes the point by starting off saying with the hypothesis that when a person spends a lot of time away from the is a huge chance that they could commit a crime. This has an impact on the act because the person or person's that they do the crime against will be protected. She goes on to mention that instead of utilizing real individuals in this experiment, Groff got her hands on a computer simulated model which was able to incorporate dissimilar topographical evidence in addition to crime rates that are coming from these places.

What was discovered from this experiment was that crime follows at least 5 exact crime patterns. All of these patterns are considered to be a "high degree of gathering different crimes, discussion of crime in comparatively few places, fairly few offenders accountable for most of the crime, rather few victims accounting for most of the victimization and non-static designs of crime overtime," (Michael, 2007). The individuals that had been used in the experiment were followed based on how much time they had been staying away from home, from 40% of their time to 80%. The report found out that those who spent 80% of their time away from home were got in trouble with the law and had numerous run ins with the police. This has an impact on the Victim's Right Act of 2004 because it allows all of the victims that were involved with the crime to be protected (Cassell, 2005). This theory in some ways was beneficial with this experiment because actually the more crime that went up, the more that this act had to be put into practice. Utilizing this info and other material that had been discovered found in her study, Groff mace the discovery that her hypothesis in the long run had been accurate and that the experiment basically just heartened the impression of the Routine Activity Theory (Cassell, 2005).

Later on down the road, this theory would once more be tested again, nonetheless in relation to a crime that was of a different nature. Navarro and Jasinki both attempted to utilize the Routine Activity Theory in order to find out who had the highest risk to contribute in Cyberbullying. This has an impact on Victim's Right Act of 2004 because now bullying is against the law and the victim would still have the same rights as any other victim that would have been involved in a crime of rape or theft. It has been discovered that "Concerning motivated offenders, RAT philosophers mostly consent that there are many 'out there,'" (Cassell, 2005). Individuals are then made to be much more susceptible to a crime when they are online, and there turns out to be a wealth of "targets that are suitable." The third and concluding facet, lack of protection, is also discovered to be online. Parents are the ones that need to make sure those parental controls are put on a computer and that they will be able to act as a spare guardian; nevertheless this is not the situation. A long time ago, the victim would not have been protected by the Victim's Right Act of 2004 because it was not put into practice and also bullying was not yet against the law. Parental controls do not always filter what kids and teenagers are saying on the internet and certain websites that they are permitted to go into, for instance, their email or social interacting sites for instance Facebook (Levine, 2010). In this fashion, Routine Activity Theory could be explained why Cyberbullying has turned into a crime that has become widespread (Cassell, 2005).

Victim's Right Act of 2004 does protect those from the internet as well. However, over the years here has been some disapproval of Routine Activity Theory, particularly concerning how merely this theory speaks to crime. This theory simply offers three issues for crime, and neglects to speak to the… READ MORE

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