Project : Field Interview: Overview
As part of your role as a system-based advocate, you have been asked to assess the officers and other community based partners understanding of crime victims rights through conducting various surveys and individual interviews of cadets that have recently completed the academy. For this project you will be interviewing one person in the allowable categories and providing a narrative summary of your analysis of the interviewees understanding of the crime victims rights movement and the history and evolution of this movement over time.
Allowable interviewee categories:
Representative of a victim service organization (can include a victim advocate, case manager, or crime victims rights attorney);
Prosecutor (within the civilian criminal justice system);
Law Enforcement (within the civilian criminal justice system);
Judicial Officer (requires that they oversee a criminal docket); or
Defense Attorney (within the civilian criminal justice system).
It is important that the candidate you select has enough consistent interaction with crime victims to offer you enough information for your analysis.
Following your interview, write a narrative paper that explains your assessment of the persons work and perspective/knowledge of victims rights. Include analysis on where their perspective is victimcentered or could be improved. A large part of this project is for you to see what service providers and system players do on a day-to day-basis and analyze how it impacts their perceptions ofvictims and/or changes their interactions with victims. You must include at least five (5) citations to instructional course materials/reading assignments that you have accessed in the course. Incorporating these supportive references into your analysis is key to demonstrating what you are learning in the course and how it helped shaped your analysis during and after the interview.
Required information to be included in the Cover Page:
Agency name
Contact information for the agency
Date the interview was conducted
Agency mission/goals
Name of person(s) interviewed
Type of agency, type/number of staff, and status, e.g., nonprofit, government, faith-based
Type of clients served
Geographic area served
General services provided by agency
Challenges the agency faces
The representative’s interaction with victims and the point at which she or he comes in contact with victims
Agency activities during a “normal day”
Required analysis to include in the paper:
The required information is offered for you to use as the starting point for your interview. The following questions should be addresses somewhere in the analysis that you provide in your narrative:
How does the interviewee view the role of the victim in the pursuit of criminal justice?
What is the interviewees opinion of the efficiency and effectiveness of the prevailing victims rights laws in their jurisdiction? If there are no codified provisions for victims rights by statute orcourt rule, why do they believe no such consideration exists?
To what does the interviewee attribute the absence or reluctance of victims to participate in the criminal justice processes?
What is the interviewees understanding of crime victims rights and the history of this movement?
