Criminal Justice Assignment: Victim Impact Statement

Victim Impact Statement
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Victim Impact Statement
A victim impact statement is an oral or written information form a crime victim in his or her own words explaining how he was affected by the crime. Therefore, the victim-impact statement provides the victims with an opportunity to explain how they have been impacted by the crime. The information provided in the victim-impact statement plays a significant role in the decision making process by enabling the judge decide the punishment the offender deserves (Schweitzer & Nuñez, 2017). Moreover, they provide more information that may have been missing from the court in regard to how the victims suffered.
A victim-impact statement should be admissible at the sentencing stage of the criminal trials due to various reasons. First, it enables the prosecutor to get additional information that can be used in the closing arguments to support the court’s theory of the case and punishment preferences. Second, it provides qualitative information to the jury in regard to the in...