A Private and Novel Conception Under the United States’ Federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act

Abstract This chapter argues that recent victim participatory mechanisms of state accountability in the United States, particularly motions in criminal proceedings and mandamus under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, have also contributed to reinforcing a private conception of victim interests—understood as rights grounded in possessive individualism. This has given rise to a primarily procedural/process-based form of prosecutorial accountability. This type of accountability has generally enabled victims to participate in processes to provide their personal views but not challenge or shape the rationales or content of prosecutorial decisions. As such, the victim’s role as an agent of state accountability in the United States has largely been limited to holding the state accountable for procedural shortcomings related to victim participation, rather than for the substantive content of its decisions.