Over the past three decades, the criminal
justice field has witnessed an astounding proliferation of statutory
enhancements benefiting people who are most directly and intimately
affected by crime.To date, all states have passed some form of legislation
to benefit victims. In addition, 32 states have recognized the supreme
importance of fundamental and express rights for crime victims by
raising those
protections to the constitutional level.
Of course, the nature, scope, and enforcement
of victims rights vary from state to state, and it is a complex
and often frustrating matter for victims to determine what those
rights mean for them.To help victims, victim advocates, and victim
service providers understand the relevance of the myriad laws and
constitutional guarantees, the Office for Victims of Crime awarded
funding to the National Center for Victims of Crime to produce a
series of bulletins addressing salient legal issues affecting crime
victims.
Reporting School Violence, the
second in the series, provides an overview of state laws enacted
in recent years to address violence in U.S. schools, particularly
those laws concerning the collection of data and reporting of such
incidents.This bulletin and the others in the Legal Series highlight
various circumstances in which such laws are applied, emphasizing
their successful implementation.
We hope that victims, victim advocates,
victim service providers, criminal justice professionals, and policymakers
in states across the Nation will find the bulletins in this series
helpful in making sense of the criminal justice process and in identifying
areas in which rights could be strengthened or more clearly defined.We
encourage you to use these bulletins not simply as informational
resources but as tools to support victims in their involvement with
the criminal justice system.
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