Reporting School Violence. Legal Series Bulletin No. 2

摘要

Over the past three decades, the criminal justice field has witnessed an astounding proliferation of statutory enhancements benefiting people who are most directly and intimately affected by crime. To date, all states have passed some form of legislation to benefit victims. In addition, 32 states have recognized the supreme importance of fundamental and express rights for crime victims by raising those protections to the constitutional level. Of course, the nature, scope, and enforcement of victims' rights vary from state to state, and it is a complex and often frustrating matter for victims to determine what those rights mean for them.To help victims, victim advocates, and victim service providers understand the relevance of the myriad laws and constitutional guarantees, the Office for Victims of Crime awarded funding to the National Center for Victims of Crime to produce a series of bulletins addressing salient legal issues affecting crime victims. Reporting School Violence, the second in the series, provides an overview of state laws enacted in recent years to address violence in U.S. schools, particularly those laws concerning the collection of data and reporting of such incidents. This bulletin and the others in the Legal Series highlight various circumstances in which such laws are applied, emphasizing their successful implementation.