NEW YORK — The first time Ralph Hubbard visited a prison, he sat alone in the parking lot for half an hour, his stomach churning.
Hubbard, 62, a tough former cop, certainly knew criminals. But now he was facing them in a searing new role. When his only son was shot to death after a senseless argument over a videotape, he joined the swelling army of Americans who know helplessness, frustration and rage as victims of crime.
After the murder, he punched a hole in a wall. He wept almost every day for eight months, alone, too proud to show his tears, on the top floor of his home in Brooklyn.
Eventually, Hubbard's anguish turned to action.
He became a board member of Parents of Murdered Children of New York State, and that role brought him to Rikers Island, the world's largest detention center, with 14,800 inmates.
"I could never just stand and forgive the person," he told a prisoner who asked about his son's killer. "I wanted to get my gun and go out and find him and blow him away. But I had responsibilities. . . . I did not push that one button that would have made me go over the line."
Hubbard's meeting with the prisoners in the Rikers library--a recounting of his tragedy designed to confront criminals with the carnage they cause--is just one example of the activism of the crime victims movement in the United States.
Just as Hubbard ventured where victims did not go a few years ago, advocates for victims can now be found in courts, prosecutors' offices, churches, hospitals, mental health facilities and social service agencies.
In two decades the movement has grown to more than 9,000 organizations with millions of members, ranging from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the Family Violence Prevention Fund to Concerns of Police Survivors, which helps relatives of slain officers.
In the process, victims-rights advocates have become a prime mover in making crime the nation's No. 1 concern. They are the centerpiece of media focus on the effects of crime. They are the most numerous voices for stiffer penalties. They are demanding--and increasingly getting--action from police, prosecutors, parole boards and politicians.
"Crime victims have one horrible badge--credibility," said Jay Howell, a former prosecutor in Jacksonville, Fla., who helped set up the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
