UPI Study › Courses › Criminology › Free lessons › Lesson 5.2 Free with a free account
Costs of Victimization and Historical Development of Victims' Rights
Criminology · Chapter 5: Victimology and Victims' RightsSection 5.2 · lesson 11 of 9112 min · free with a free account
Free preview
Create a free account to keep watching
It takes a minute and costs nothing. Your free account unlocks all of Chapter 1 and 3 more lessons of Criminology.
Lesson complete
Earn the 3 college credits for Criminology
Enrolling adds a quiz after each lesson, the graded work and the official transcript. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
Next lesson: OVC: Mission, Institutional History, and Programmatic Responsibilities →← Victimology: Theoretical Foundations, Evolving Definitions, and OriginsNext lesson: OVC: Mission, Institutional History, and Programmatic Responsibilities →
In this lesson
What victimization costs, and how victims gained a role in the case.
- Describe the categories of cost victimization imposes.
- Explain how prosecution shifted from victim to state.
- Trace the development of the victims' rights movement.
- State victims' rights at the principal stages of a case.
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,540 words). Read along, or search it.
Opening Question
Who Pays for Dana's Victimization
One evening, walking home, Dana's bag is grabbed, and she falls, hurting her wrist. Victimization costs something. But who pays, and how would anyone measure it? And why, once the case begins, will Dana stand in it as a witness, rather than as a party? This lesson separates the costs an offense imposes, traces how prosecution passed from victims to the state, and follows the rights victims hold today.
Cost Type One
Direct Tangible Costs Leave Receipts
Victimization imposes cost in four distinct forms, and keeping them separate matters. Direct tangible costs are out-of-pocket losses: stolen property, medical treatment, and lost wages. They're the easiest to measure, because they leave receipts, medical records, and pay stubs.
Cost Type Two
System Costs of Operating the Response
Indirect, or system, costs come from operating the response, rather than from the harm itself. They include policing, prosecution, courts, and victim services, plus Dana's own time spent on the case. They're moderately hard to measure, because shared agency budgets must be divided among individual cases.
Cost Types Three, Four
Intangible and Third-Party Costs
Intangible costs capture harm with no market price: fear, disrupted sleep, and damaged trust. Third-party and public costs fall on insurers, on employers who lose productivity, and on communities that feel less safe. Both are hard to measure: intangible harm has no price, and third-party costs are spread across many bearers. Each category falls on a different party, so each calls for a different policy response.
Summary Table
Four Costs by Bearer and Measurability
This table lines them up by who bears each cost, and how hard it is to measure. Direct tangible, indirect or system, intangible, and third-party costs: four bearers, four measurement problems, and different policy responses.
Reading Estimates
Why Cost Estimates Vary So Widely
Published cost estimates vary widely across studies and agencies. That doesn't mean any one estimate is careless: it reflects genuine disagreement about putting a dollar figure on intangible harm. How do you price fear, or a life not lived the way it would have been? Reasonable analysts choose differently. Still, estimates do real work: they help size compensation funds, calculate restitution schedules, and persuade legislatures to fund victim services. So read carefully, rather than dismissing them: check the valuation method, and separate documented direct costs from monetized intangible harm.
Key Concept
Secondary Victimization From the Process
Some harm comes not from the offense, but from what happens afterward. Victimologists call it secondary victimization: harm caused by the criminal process itself. Dana repeats her account many times, to different officials. She waits through delays, many outside anyone's control. She loses control over decisions the process now holds: whether to proceed, how to describe what happened, and when the case moves. And in an adversarial system, she often feels like a witness in the state's case, not a party whose interests the process centers. None of this is necessarily anyone's fault; it's a structural feature. Naming it as real harm is one of victimology's clearest policy contributions.
Quick Check
Whose Cost Is the Premium Rise
Quick check. A burglary victim's insurer pays for her stolen laptop, then raises premiums across her whole block. Whose cost is that rise in premiums? Pause, and decide. Third-party cost: it's spread across her neighbors, people the burglary never touched. The laptop itself was her direct tangible cost. One event can carry several kinds of cost at once.
Historical Shift
From Private Prosecution to the State
Why is Dana a witness? Look back at Anglo-American legal history. In earlier periods, bringing a criminal charge was substantially a private matter. The injured party, or their family, carried the prosecution, much like a plaintiff in a civil case. Any compensation flowed to them directly. Over time, prosecution was reconceived as a matter between the state and the accused: an offense wrongs the public order, not merely the person harmed. That brought real benefits: prosecution no longer depended on a private party's resources or appetite for conflict, and public standards became consistent. But the victim, once the party who controlled the case, became a witness in a case the state now owned. The harm didn't change. What changed was who held authority to decide whether, and how, it would be pursued.
Rights Movement
Constituencies Behind Victims' Rights Legislation
The victims' rights movement grew from several constituencies with one shared complaint: the victim had no formal standing in a process built around the state and the accused. Advocates for survivors of sexual offenses and domestic violence documented a problem: the process served people reporting those offenses poorly. Groups organized by families of homicide victims pressed for a voice in proceedings that excluded them. And broader law-and-order coalitions, for their own reasons, also backed formal roles for victims. They didn't share every goal, but over several decades in the late twentieth century, their combined pressure produced federal and state legislation granting victims defined rights.
Six Functions
Victims' Rights Understood by Function
The resulting rights are best understood by function, not by any single national statute, because rights and their enforceability vary considerably by state. Some protections exist at the federal level, but only for federal cases. Six functions recur. Notification: being informed of major developments. Presence: attending proceedings. Being heard: addressing the court at defined points, most prominently sentencing. Restitution: a court order that the offender compensate measurable loss. Protection: provisions for the victim's safety while the case is pending. And consultation: some voice, of varying formal weight, in decisions such as plea negotiations. No jurisdiction guarantees all six in identical form, so treat no single state's list as representative.
Case Stages
Matching Rights to Stages of a Case
Let's lay these rights along the stages of a case. At report and investigation, notification begins. At charging, some jurisdictions give a right to be heard, though this varies. In pretrial proceedings, Dana is notified of proceedings, and may be present. At trial or plea, presence continues, and some states require consultation on a plea. At sentencing, she may be heard, often through an impact statement, and restitution is set. After conviction, she's notified of release or parole hearings. Beneath every stage runs the enforcement question: what remedy exists if this right isn't honored?
Debate
The Contested Victim Impact Statement
The victim impact statement is among the most visible products of the movement, and among the most contested. It's an oral or written statement describing the offense's effect on the victim, usually given at sentencing. Supporters say it shows the court harm it would otherwise never see, restores voice to someone reduced to a witness, and shows the experience was taken seriously. Critics answer that sentencing should weigh the offender's conduct and culpability against a consistent legal standard. If sentences shift with how articulate or sympathetic a victim is, comparable conduct may draw different sentences. Both sides usually agree the victim deserves some voice. How much sentences actually shift is an empirical question; how much they should is a normative one.
Common Confusion
Restitution Versus Victim Compensation
Two remedies are often confused: restitution and victim compensation. Restitution is paid by the offender. The court orders it in the criminal case, tied to the specific loss the offense caused. Victim compensation is paid from a state or federal fund, not by the offender. It exists precisely because restitution often goes uncollected: the offender may be unconvicted, or unable to pay. Compensation programs usually cover defined categories, such as medical or funeral costs, under eligibility rules that vary by state. The two are complementary, not substitutes. A victim may be entitled to both, and a fund never relieves an offender of court-ordered restitution.
Quick Check
Which Remedy Covers Dana's Medical Bills
Try one. The person who took Dana's bag is never identified. Which remedy can still help with her medical bills? Pause, and decide. Victim compensation. Restitution needs a convicted offender; a compensation fund doesn't, if Dana meets her state's eligibility rules.
Enforcement Gap
Rights on Paper Versus in Practice
A right written in a statute isn't the same as a right honored in practice; the movement's unfinished business is largely enforcement. When notification, presence, or being heard is ignored, some jurisdictions let a victim seek a court order compelling compliance going forward. Far fewer allow a conviction or sentence to be reopened solely because a victim's right was violated. That reflects a judgment that finality in criminal cases serves an independent public interest, so many rights are strong statements of intent, with narrower remedies. Consider Devon, a court administrator asked to meet a new duty to notify victims, with no added budget. Devon must decide whether charging, scheduling changes, sentencing, or parole hearings matter most. A right stated in general terms still needs someone to choose which contact will reach the person.
Big Picture
Participation Within the State's Process
Even after decades of reform, the historical shift still defines the victim's position. The case belongs to the state, which decides whether to charge, what to charge, and whether to negotiate a plea; victims' rights operate alongside that process, not in place of it. That's no defect to fix by returning to private prosecution, because the reasons for the shift remain sound. So the movement made a strategic choice: defined participation rights within the state's process, keeping consistent, publicly administered prosecution. The debate since has centered on how far those rights should reach, and what happens when one isn't honored.
Key Takeaways
Recap of Costs, History, and Rights
Let's recap. Victimization imposes four kinds of cost: direct tangible, indirect or system, intangible, and third-party. The process itself can harm: secondary victimization. Prosecution passed from victims to the state, and the rights movement added participation rights, rather than undoing that shift. Those rights are best read by function, and they vary by state, with enforcement still unfinished. Restitution and compensation are complementary. For practice, classify harms, compare rights, and match each to a stage of the case. Next, Subchapter five point three looks at the Office for Victims of Crime.
About Criminology at UPI Study
Criminology (Criminology 150) is a self-paced online course of 91 video lessons in 21 chapters, from classical criminology and crime data to theories of crime, victims, policing, courts and corrections. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus Every course with PRO →
Why take it here
Why students take Criminology with UPI Study
Where the credit goes
Universities that work with NCCRS
Criminology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Thomas Edison State UniversitySigned partner
University of the PeopleSigned partner
Charter Oak State CollegeSigned partner
Strayer UniversitySigned partner
Columbia Southern UniversitySigned partner
Indiana TechSigned partner
Penn StateWorks with NCCRS
Southern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRS
SUNYWorks with NCCRS
+many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.
FAQ
Questions students ask us
About Costs of Victimization and Historical Development of Victims' Rights
What are the four categories of cost that victimization imposes?
Why did prosecution move from victims to the state?
What is the difference between restitution and victim compensation?
What rights do crime victims have at different stages of a criminal case?
About the Criminology course
How many college credits is Criminology?
How much does Criminology cost and what is included?
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
How long does Criminology take?
How are the exams done?
How do my credits reach my college?
Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Criminology.
91 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →