The principles behind these bills

Every bill on this site was tested against the same seven principles before it was drafted. They are stated here in plain language, so any advocate can test the bills against them too.

1. Protect and expand victims' rights

Victims' rights in Texas should be real, growing, and ultimately constitutional — building toward a Texas Victims' Bill of Rights on the foundation of Article I, §30, not a set of courtesies that depend on who happens to be in office.

2. Empower people before they become victims

The best victim is the one who never becomes one. Prevention, safer places, and the right of self-defence are equal parts of that — and none of it is about blaming people who were harmed for failing to prevent their own harm.

3. Support victims through the criminal justice system

Victims are involuntary participants in the criminal justice system. Nobody chooses to be in it; they are put there by someone else's crime. From the first report to the last parole hearing, the system should carry them through it — informed, heard, and not re-injured by the process itself.

4. Give victims access to evidence when appropriate

A family should be able to see the evidence of what happened to the person they love — privately, before trial, when it is appropriate — without that private viewing making the evidence public. The prosecutor's judgment and the safety of the case come first; silence and surprise should not be the default.

5. See perpetrators get the justice they deserve

Sentences and parole decisions should rest on the harm done and the danger a person presents, decided in the light of day, with victims represented in the decisions that release the people who harmed them.

6. A right that cannot be enforced is a promise, not a right

Every victims' right must name who owes it and by when, and victims must have standing to enforce their rights. A right with no one responsible for it and no way to insist on it does not exist in any way that matters to a family.

7. Justice requires innocence protection

None of the other six principles counts if the system convicts the innocent. The rights of the accused are not an obstacle to victims' rights; they are what makes a conviction worth having. Any proposal that traded away innocence protection would fail this test — and would not appear on this site.