Trans & Non-Binary Survivors and Crime Victims’ Rights Law Reform: Missing the Mark
A workshop at the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference, Legal Track.
Since 1980, criminal justice reforms have re-centered victims in criminal proceedings by creating minimum standards for privacy, respect, notice, participation, and more. While recent reforms aim to expand these protections throughout much of the country, they are missing the mark for trans/non-binary survivors of violence. Disparate rates of abuse, stigma and bias, hesitancy in reporting of crime, and fear and distrust prevent many trans/non-binary survivors from pursuing justice or accessing services dependent on reporting. Join this workshop in exploring victims’ rights laws and re-envisioning them as inclusive of the needs of trans/non-binary survivors.
Learning objectives
- Participants will become familiar with victims’ rights laws and their initial development and current expansion.
- Participants will gain understanding of needs particular to trans/non-binary survivors.
- Participants will actively consider how legal reforms can re-shape survivors’ experiences.
Citations (16,000 char):
King, S. (2019). The Criminal Justice System’s Mistreatment of Transgender Individuals: A Call for Policy Reform to Assist a Marginalized Prisoner Community, 11(1). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1753/the-criminal-justice-systems-mistreatment-of-transgender-individuals-a-call-for-policy-reform-to-assist-a-marginalized-prisoner-community.
Jill Lepore, The Rise of the Victims’-Rights Movement: How a conservative agenda and a feminist cause came together to transform criminal justice, The New Yorker (May 21, 2018), https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/21/the-rise-of-the-victims-rights-movement.
Marsy’s Law for All of Us, State Efforts (2019), https://www.marsyslaw.us/states.
National Center for Transgender Equality, U.S. Transgender Survey (2015), http://www.ustranssurvey.org/reports.
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Hate and Intimate Partner Violence in 2017 (2017), http://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NCAVP-HV-IPV-2017-report.pdf.
National Organization for Victim Assistance, The History of the Crime Victims’ Movement in the United States (Dec. 2004), https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2005/pdf/historyofcrime.pdf.