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I don’t think we focus enough on victims of violence and how their lives are changed. Take mass shootings, for example. We gorge on details about the killer and his motives. We dwell on things like numbers—how many people were murdered—but we quickly lose interest in the survivors. I watched Fox’s documentary on the Las Vegas shooting, and was struck by how I came away with much more understanding of the magnitude of the tragedy because I listened to the stories of victims.
We ask courts and juries to mete out some pretty extreme forms of punishment. Hearing from the victims is, IMO, critical part of ensuring the punishment fits the crime, and, more importantly, that the public hears just exactly what it means, for example, for a young woman to get shot in the face.
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