What Victims Really Need: A Conversation with Author and Victim Advocate Susan Herman

Susan Herman, who served for seven years as the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, talks about her book Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime. The following is a transcript ROB WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. Welcome to another New Thinking podcast. I’m here with Susan Herman who is an associate professor at Pace University, and formerly the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington. She has been involved with, in some form or another, working with victims of crime for nearly 30 years. She recently has published a book called “Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime,” which presents an approach for integrating victims into the way we think about crime in the United States, and how we can respond to crime, how we should include victims in, as the title suggests, a parallel justice, so Susan, thanks for taking the time to speak with me. SUSAN HERMAN: You’re welcome. It’s great to be here. WOLF: Why don’t we just start out with you explaining to me a little bit about your experience focusing on victims issues and how they brought you to this place where you’ve come up with this book and the ideas behind it? HERMAN: Many years ago, before I went to law school, I started out as a self-defense instructor working with victims of sexual assault and rape crisis counselors. I saw firsthand what the trauma of crime can do to people, how debilitating it can be, how the reactions of people can last for a long time, and can produce more limited and more unproductive and satisfying lives in people. I started thinking about what our response to victims of crime should be, how we can respond better as a society, how we can respond as government, as community members, and as individuals. That’s what Parallel Justice is all about. It’s a set of principles and values that provide a framework for communal response to victims. WOLF: I’m going to ask you a little bit more about those principles in a moment, but let me ask you how you engage in a nuanced discussion about victims in a world where there seems to be generally the sense that you have victims over on this side, and if you’re doing something good for victims it means locking up as many offenders as you can, and being as punitive as you can, or if you’re on the side of the offenders, you’re really looking at preserving their rights. I mean, there’s a whole spectrum of responses to offenders, but somehow there is not a dialog between these two camps. It’s … HERMAN: There’s very little dialog between these camps, and when there is, sometimes it’s quite poisonous. It’s really fear-based politics. There’s this sense that if you listen to victims’ emotions, or understand their needs, that the whole process is going to become too irrational, too emotional, maybe too retributive. There’s a sense that if we devoted more resources to victims, that means we’re taking away resources from offenders. In my view, we have arrived at this polarized conversation because we have neglected to see a few things. We’ve neglected to really understand the full impact of crime and the cost to our society, the connection between victimization and drug and alcohol abuse, the connection between victimization and homelessness, poverty, poor academic performance, and it leads to, in many cases, offending behavior. If you look at juvenile delinquency, for instance, the greatest risk factor in juvenile delinquency is not what people think. It’s not drug or alcohol abuse. It’s not teenage pregnancy. It’s victimization. The most prominent risk factor that’s recognized in the research leading to juvenile delinquency, which later leads to adult criminal behavior, is victimization. We don’t address victimization, in my view, at our peril. I think victim assistance could be one of the greatest crime prevention strategies we could employ. WOLF: I understand that one of the greatest challenges you face as a victim advocate is that so many people who are victims don’t even report crimes. HERMAN: Why would you report a crime if you think that the only thing that’s going to happen has nothing to do with you? If what you need, if you’re a person who’s afraid, you’ve been beaten up in your neighborhood and you’re afraid to go home, and your laptop and your cell phone have been stolen, and you can’t function anymore on the job or at school, if you don’t think that reporting to the police is going to address any of those problems, and all it’s going to do is make you take time off to go to court, or try and find somebody, and the police have said that they don’t have a lot of evidence and nothing is going to happen anyway, why report? We have to create a process where victims feel that we care about the impact of crime. We care about what’s happened to them, that we acknowledge that what’s happened to them is wrong, and that they believe we’re going to do everything we can to help them. We don’t have that now. WOLF: Will they get their laptop and their phone back or will they be compensated for that? HERMAN: Who reports? You know, people have their cars stolen or damaged report, because unless they report they won’t get any insurance, right? WOLF: Right. HERMAN: There’s a goody that comes from reporting. WOLF: Right. HERMAN: I think we have to have this mindset that there has to be some response that addresses the needs of victims. Otherwise, why should they tell us about this? That might be more compensation. That might be counseling and support. It might be helping them fix the broken window that the burglar went through right away. You’re actually addressing their need to be safe rather than just saying, “I see you have a broken window. That’s how he got in. I’ll see if I can find him.” WOLF: I’m speaking with Susan Herman who’s formerly the Executive Director of the National Center for Victims of Crime. She’s an Associate Director at Pace, and the author of the new book, Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime. Tell me about some of the principles that you referred to earlier? HERMAN: One of the things that we know from research is that when you’re a victim of crime, and this is really across the board, almost any kind of crime, you are more vulnerable to crime for a short period of time at least, than you were before that crime occurred. You are vulnerable to what we call “repeat victimization.” One of the principles of Parallel Justice is the safety of victims would be a high priority. That means for the police, for the prosecutors, for the courts, for healthcare people, for anyone who is responding to that victim. They would take the time and do what they could to prevent repeat victimization. For instance, instead of the first responder just determining whether there was a crime that occurred and gathering evidence, you would take the time to figure out what that victim might do to make it less likely that another crime was going to take place. Another principle is that victims would be presumed credible unless there is reason to believe otherwise. That’s pretty fundamental that when someone comes to you and says, “This happened to me,” that we treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve by believing them until or unless there is a reason not to, rather than starting out as skeptical, or non-believing, or trivializing, or dismissing what they say. WOLF: Is that common? I mean, I would think that most places would formally say their policy would be to, you know, at least the police departments would say … HERMAN: Most people would say their formal policy … sure, except if you look at police departments across the country who are under great pressure to have their crime statistics as low as possible, and then you talk to victims who feel that their complaint either wasn’t taken, or it was downgraded, that violates that principle of parallel justice. They were not presumed credible. WOLF: Is there a hierarchy of victims, where people who have been a victim of a violent crime versus a non-violent, or identity theft versus rape, or, I mean, obviously there’s things are more severe than others. But does the system also see it that way too and treat victims differently in a way that you feel perhaps should be corrected or is not appropriate? HERMAN: Yeah, I think over the last 30 years we’ve created a statutes at the state level, federal laws, thousands and thousands of victims rights, pieces of legislation that are primarily directed at victims of violent crime. Two-thirds of victims of crime in this country are victims of property crime, or non-violent crime, and they are left out of most victims rights legislation, which means we know that victims of property crime take days off from work, lose money, often have the same financial, psychological, sometimes even physical responses of violation and depression, and mental illness that victims of violent crimes do. Just imagine if you’re the victim of crime on the street, somebody’s knocked you down and taken your wallet, and taken ten bucks out of your wallet. You have the right to be notified of the proce...