Project 2—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 your Project 2 you will be interviewing one person in the allowable categories and providing a narrative summary of your analysis of the interviewee’s understanding of the crime victims’ rights movement and the history and evolution of this movement over time. This analysis will be provided in a 3-5 page paper that addresses the required questions and analysis below.
Project 2—Field Interview: Description
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 person’s work and perspective/knowledge of victims’ rights. Include analysis on where their perspective is victim centered 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 of victims 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 paper:
- 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 interviewee’s 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 or court 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 interviewee’s understanding of crime victims’ rights and the history of this movement?
Formatting Requirements:
Project 2 should begin with an introductory paragraph and end with a concluding paragraph. The full narrative should be between 3 to 5 full pages (not including the Works Cited page that references in APA format the five (5) selected course materials you used). The layout should include double spaces, 12 pt. Times New Roman font, with one inch margins that include first line indentation.
Please include a Cover Page for your assignment with the following elements:
- Include your name
- Course title and number
- Project title
- Interviewee category selected
- Date of submission
or Waypoint 
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