I spoke to a Detective at the Pinellas County (FL) Sheriff's Department about this in late September of 2002. I handed him about 200 copies of snail mail I had received since 1991 about strenghtening the hand of victims in the legal game. He had said later that week in a phone call that the police had mixed feelings about arming victims and their family members with access to practical information. I guess it makes their jobs harder if you have victims and their family members and others asking a lot of questions and making a nuisance of themselves in the investigations.

Think it would make jurors less easy to manipulate too if you have citizens very much familiar with the workings of the criminal justice system.

It is kind of a problem when the people doing the victimizing may be the people who are also getting the information.

I have had a devil of a time since 1991 getting law libraries of all places to dialog with victim assistance groups about the needs of victims of crimes and their family members.

Tried to post copies of all these 200 or so letters on Findlaw's message boards in the Summer of 2002 but found myself a wide open target to just about every regular poster on these message boards. Findlaw is supposedly about getting people information about aspects of the law including Criminal Law. The letters did stay on Findlaw's boards that summer of 2002 though.