This text provides a critical analysis of the role of victims in the criminal justice system in the US as a whole. It focuses not only on the victims of crime, but also on those of the war on victimless crime. After first offering a critique of the American penal system in the age of the crime war, Dubber undertakes a comparative reading of American criminal law and the law of crime victim compensation, culminating in a wide-ranging revision that takes victims seriously, and offenders as well. Dubber here salvages the project of vindicating victims' rights for its own sake, rather than as a weapon in the war against criminals. Uncovering the legitimate core of the victims' rights movement from underneath existing layers of bellicose rhetoric, he demonstrates how victims' rights can help build up a system of American criminal justice after the frenzy of the war on crime has died down.
