SMU Law Review Forum
Abstract
The public’s concern over safety and rising crime rates dominated opinion polls and played a significant role in the 2024 presidential election. This article argues that, although much has been written on the offender’s state of mind and the concrete harms offenders impose, what is missing is a more victim-centric understanding of the full scope of crime’s consequences.
Criminal offenders’ selfish, self-directed conduct subjugates the victims’ legally protected interests and conveys that they do not consider their victims’ rights sufficiently important or deserving of conduct-guiding respect. Offenders, in short, differentiate themselves from the social group by adopting the harmful mindset that the rules applicable to everyone else do not equally apply to them.
In so doing, offenders morally betray both their victim and society and, therefore, cannot expect equal respect from the community. The article traces out this dynamic and highlights the distinct injury the offender’s self-elevation-through-subjugation inflicts. It concludes that we, for both evaluative and descriptive reasons, must make this more victim-centered understanding of criminal culpability a part of our criminal justice vocabulary.
Recommended Citation
T. Markus Funk,
How Criminal Offenders Offend Society’s Equality Expectations,
78
SMU L. Rev. F.
47
(2025)
