In contrast to works on victim advocacy in specific organizational contexts, this article introduces the term "victim work" to capture the vast array of victim-related roles and tasks that have proliferated in recent decades. Data are derived from in-depth interviews with 30 "victim workers" in public and private agencies in two Midwestern states. The interviews revealed diverse work experiences that spanned hotlines, crisis response, legal proceedings, and postconviction support. Three themes emerged that characterize "victim work": flexibility, emotions, and the challenge of "fit"-the multifaceted difficulties of interacting with victims and agents of the justice system. Based on the findings, we offer a revised model of criminal justice vis-à-vis victims and implications for practice and future research.
In recent decades, there has been a remarkable growth in the number of foreign attorneys enrolled at U.S. law schools and particularly in LL.M. programs. To learn more about these students and how they fare, we conducted research in two law schools, one in the Midwest and the second on the East Coast. We examine the admissions process for foreign attorneys from the perspectives and experiences of both the administrators who make admissions decisions and the students who seek admission. We consider the layered international, national, state, and local laws that complicate the selection process, as well as the standards set by the schools themselves. To understand who gets in and who does not, we interviewed nine administrators who admit and support the international students during their studies. We observed how accounting practices and techniques of audit culture color administrative decision-making, but also the conditions under which discretion comes into play. We collected quantitative data about the students at the two schools and analyzed their personal statements using the anthropological and linguistic concept of "genre," a stylized narrative, that revealed students' life histories, education, work experiences, motives for attending the programs, and future goals. The narratives, and our interviews with fifty students who attended the programs, demonstrate that internationalization has changed the terms for inclusion in U.S. law schools. The structures of privilege play by different rules at the international level. They include a wider politics of interstate relations, the vicissitudes of international and national law, the operation of audit cultures, a certain proficiency in English as the lingua franca of international law, and the ability to muster economic and other symbolic resources, even under great hardship. As sites of globalization, law
The article examines how court professionals interact with and manage victims in the wake of victim participatory reforms instituted within an adversarial legal model. Analysis is based on an examination of interviews with legal and allied professionals (n ¼ 36) and victims-turned-activists (n ¼ 7) from four jurisdictions in a US state about their experiences following implementation of legislation that expanded victims' participatory rights in legal proceedings. An examination of the strategies described in the interviews reveals that legal and allied professionals actively manage victims' participation throughout the legal process by using creative means to protect them from the sometimes onerous effects of participation while also meeting institutional needs, albeit with varying levels of success. Four strategies-demystification, management of emotions, victimshielding and strategic exclusion-are discussed and the limits to their efficacy are considered. Future theoretical and policy implications for the practice of victim participation in adversarial legal systems are also addressed.
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