Second wounds : victims' rights and the media in the United States

Analyzes how the U.S. victims rights movement has expanded the concept of victimhood to include family members and others close to the direct victims of violent crime. The U.S. victims’ rights movement has transformed the way that violent crime is understood and represented in the United States. It has expanded the concept of victimhood to include family members and others close to direct victims, and it has argued that these secondary victims may be further traumatized through their encounters with insensitive journalists and the cold, impersonal nature of the criminal justice system. This concept of extended victimization has come to dominate representations of crime and the American criminal justice system. In Second Wounds, Carrie A. Rentschler examines how the victims’ rights movement brought about such a marked shift in how Americans define and portray crime. Analyzing the movement’s effective mobilization of activist networks and its implementation of media strategies, she interprets texts such as press kits, online victim memorials, and training materials for victims’ advocates and journalists. Rentschler also provides a genealogy of the victims’ rights movement from its emergence in the 1960s into the twenty-first century. She explains that while a “get tough on crime” outlook dominates the movement, the concept of secondary victimization has been invoked by activists across the political spectrum, including anti–death penalty advocates, who contend that the families of death-row inmates are also secondary victims of violent crime and the criminal justice system. Introduction : The Victims' Rights Movement And The Second Wound -- Law And Order : The Dominant Ideology Of Victims' Rights -- An Activist History Of Victims' Rights -- Meet The Press : Representing Victims' Rights -- Undisclosed Sources : Victims' Rights And Journalism Training -- Profiles Of Life : News Memorials To The Dead -- Faces Of Murder -- Conclusion. Giving Face To The Family As Victim. Carrie A. Rentschler. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 234-255) And Index. Examines the emergence of victims' rights discourse in the U.S. since the 1960s and considers the victims' rights movement strategic deployment of media to influence how the police and courts treat victims and the families of victims