Crime Victims Movement Essay

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effective at holding perpetrators accountable. The nation, military, and criminal justice system has shifted from victim focus to offender focus. The historical development of the crime victims’ movement has altered perceptions of crime and the treatment of crime victims. Over the last three decades, the crime victims’ movement has emerged as a powerful source of social, legal, and political change. The women’s movement, as well as the law and order movement, led more directly to the emergence of a clearly defined crime victims’ movement. The history of this movement is divided into six stages, each denoting new developments in victim involvement and services, changes in service providers’ attitudes, new theoretical concepts, and ongoing legal …show more content…

Victim issues gradually moved back into the mainstream of the justice system and led to the creation of a new system Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH). Within this program, sexual harassment and sexual assault were viewed in the same form, but today we know they are indeed two separate entities. This training was conducted annually to bring awareness; however, it was still in the reactive stage. On September 11, 2001, the US military has been on high alert with their main focus on the War on Terrorism losing sight this program due to heavy deployment. Approximately 1.64 million US troops have deployed for either Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan or Operation Iraq Freedom (OIF) to Iraq. Sexual assault and sexual harassment increase dramatically during this period. According to Miller (2014), rape during conflict displays how widespread rape and pillaging has remained a strong driving force in warfare because of invisibility. Miller (2014) state another interesting statement that I do not necessarily agree with but it possess some amount of truth. He stated “rape in wartime identifies women paramilitary insurgents and revolutionaries who were raped or sexually assaulted prior to execution because their service in combat usurped patriarchal hierarchy and social order” (p.

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