Meeting with the Victims of Crime Resource Center

First, a big thanks to Kathleen Benton, a staff attorney at the Victims of Crime Resource Center in Sacramento, for meeting with our group to discuss our proposals to reform the Victims’ Bill of Rights and Marsy’s Law. Eve scheduled an appointment with Kathleen, and met with her along with Chris and I on November 2.

Although Kathleen was not as familiar with the logistical implications of Marsy’s Law, her insights into the practical aspects of the Victims’ Bill of Rights proved incredibly useful. As someone who has attended many parole hearings, Kathleen said one major problem is that testimonies during the hearings are often very repetitive. She said parole boards can limit the length of testimony given, but they cannot deny victims the right to testify. This leads to multiple short testimonies from the same groups of victims (e.g., family members) that essentially discuss the same concerns. In some cases, a representative is sent to read a letter from victims who could not attend. These letters are also often quite repetitive.

The problem is that substantially similar testimonies do not further justice and often lead to longer parole hearings, which collectively cost taxpayers money. To compound the problem, each victim is entitled to receive notice of any upcoming parole hearings. The administrative burden of identifying the victims and providing them with notice is also quite costly.

To combat both of these problems, our proposed bill limits the number of victims who have the right to receive notice and participate in parole hearings by only permitting one spokesperson for each group to speak on behalf of the victim at parole hearings and one designated person to receive notice of the parole hearing who can disseminate the notice to those parties entitled to attend the hearing. It further provides prisoners the right to have one member of either the prisoner’s family, next of kin, or designated representative have the right to receive notice and participate in parole hearings.

Kathleen also introduced our group to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation website where the public can find additional information about parole hearings, and discussed other logistical and substantive aspects of parole reform that we were able to use in our proposals. Thanks again to Kathleen. We look forward to sending her our final proposal and keeping her updated as the project progresses.