For the victim, more than pity:
Flaherty, Francis J.
COMPENSATION LAWS: LAST GAP IN OUR WELFARE SYSTEM For the...
...Victim compensation holds out reports have been glowing...
...There is widespread alienation from crime victims have no recourse but their own slim pocket- that system, Mr...
...Barkas notes that a restitution no hope for him...
...The FBI reports that the poor and the million, not a particularly large sum for the American legal unemployed are the most likely victims of violent crime...
...cried Ms...
...and because he is, it is time for us to learn from Hammurabi the lesson that crimes after all, a victim...
...And throughout this much to recommend it, it is not an answer to the problem of country, "pre-trial diversion" is an effective tool used by mass-victim compensation, simply and sadly because most police and prosecutors to avoid clogging courts and prisons...
...In Great Britain, Georgia, Arizona and Iowa...
...Poor system...
...only for lost wages and medical expenses for innocent victims -In the "Berkowitz law," the New York State Legislature of violent crimes...
...After completion of this con- tion, parole, or suspended or deferred sentences, restitution is tract, the offender is transferred from prison to the MRC, a unambiguously ideal...
...The general public funds for lost wages and medical expenses, for government lavishes money on the victims of natural disasexample, or restitution programs by which the offender repays ters," says Mr...
...ment in the criminal justice system...
...Victim compensation, in this view, is the most monwealth, and, more recently, throughout much off the basic and deserved form of welfare because the victim's need United States...
...Only persons convicted of non- conviction of the offender, it is, in Mr...
...More dangerous are the many conservatives who, percent recidivism rate for all criminals in the United States...
...If the general public were more exposed," judged Ms...
...In at least nine states, fat pocketbooks are ineligible proves him right...
...there last year (1978) to its lowest level since 1970...
...No property losses, from violent or nonprohibited convicts from profiting from the sale of their life violent crimes, are compensable...
...Most state social contract view that the state, having failed to protect boards are poorly staffed and budgeted...
...Rodino's belief that the prospect of compensation will spur more crime victims to cooperate with law enforcement agencies and, although he realizes the crime rate has broad socio-economic causes which compensation laws do not address, he hopes that by allaying middle-class suspicions that criminal justice means only justice for criminals, these laws will bestow on the American legal system that popular support without which it cannot function...
...They are likely country, of which at least 97 percent is used for "offenderto forgo income if they are absent from work...
...But, at least in the area passed a law in 1973 which required that restitution be made a of restitution...
...victim-compensation bills have died because of House inacThat conviction is gaining great strength in the United tion) can hammer out a compromise compensation bill-and States...
...They cover only the most essential expenses of recent Victims sheds much light on the neglect of crime victims often poor people who are, after all, as much victims of in America, notes that, in 1975, "in seven major states with physical injustice as the nation's unemployed minorities are compensation programs, there were 400,000 victims of vio- victims of economic injustice...
...programs, concern for the victim may spill over condition of probation for all suspended or deferred sentences...
...A RETURN TO INTERNMENT...
...It takes various forms-compensation from has arisen from a fundamental failure of the state...
...one indication of the success of the present Labor govern- The social and political grievances that had created the crisis ment's Northern Ireland strategy, which reduced the violence were forgotten...
...It has spread throughout Europe and the Com- of its citizens...
...championing the cause of the victim, studiously ignore or deny Although this percentage is based on a small number of cases, the cause of the criminal and the undeniable socio-economic it is fairly easy to see why restitution may have this enormous roots of crime...
...legislation, and are only awaiting passage of the federal law...
...Some criminologists point to this tradition and aver that the From Ms...
...If the first was to succeed then two 27 April 1979: 237...
...The Minnesota Restitution Center,(MRC), founded in 1972, But, because restitution is predicated on the arrest and is the prototype institution...
...Eleven more states have drafted the appropriate tions to their victims as a condition of probation...
...Cost estimates for these bills vary widely...
...The National District Attorneys Association, aware of the 27 April 1979: 235 problems crime victims and witnesses encounter in judicial reformative effect...
...To the extent restitution is feasible, however, on a periodic basis with his victim to draw up a legal agreement particularly for non-violent offenders and for those on probastating the terms of restitution...
...and only if his losses are uncollectable from such sources as -After several unsuccessful tries, Congressman Peter medicare, medicaid, insurance policies, or civil suits...
...Restitution," in criminology, is judges are authorized to sentence young adult offenders to reparations made by a (usually non-violent) offender to the 40-240 hours of unpaid community service in lieu of jail...
...That is, they aimed to remove any politiJACK HOLLAND, a Belfast poet and journalist, is American corre- cal claims that the paramilitaries had to justify their violence, spondent for The Irish Press and Hibernia...
...have for too long been treated solely as pieces of evidence in The violent crime victim deserves compensation because, American courtrooms...
...Restitution is "a socially appropriate repentant prosecutor, were formerly treated merely as "pieces and concrete way of expressing guilt and atonement," exof evidence...
...Rodino believes, and common observation books...
...Cheap, rehabilitative and compensatory: restituthreatened because of their testimony...
...This had happarty spokesman on Northern Ireland, Airey Neave, is looking pened partly as a result of the Conservatives' own policy which forward to a Conservative success...
...His work has appeared in whilst at the same time diverting it away from confrontations the Nation, Newsday, and the New York Times...
...Nor can the poor afford lengthy civil suits against their difference to programs that aid these offenders' victims...
...support for them among Northern Ireland's war-weary The Conservatives might have been prepared to admit as Catholics...
...Already many right- internment, which had been introduced in August, 1971...
...Not only was it an emotive rallying point for the IRA, introducing capital punishment for "terrorist type" offenses...
...Wherever restitution programs have been established, the WHAT about the offender...
...in America, the Hudson Review and other journals...
...Harold Wilson had called it a "recruiting sergeant for the the Labor Party...
...But their attitude is interpreted the troubles as being one gigantic IRA conspiracy...
...Most of these laws have numerous safeguards against fraud, Commonweal: 234 and many have procedures to insure that the victim is truly frequently move to another town after the crime, often sacrificinnocent...
...those witnesses who do not have automobiles and, for those And there are other advantages to restitution: the victim who do, he has reserved some courthouse parking spaces after receives a personal and satisfying form of compensation...
...But vendettas The recidivism rate of graduates of the MRC program is against criminals are only a minor strain in the pro-victim eight percent, a remarkably low incidence in light of the 74 movement...
...Backlogs of a year are these people, has incurred a debt to them...
...Rodino, architect of the House bill, stresses another proof"-immune from damages-anyway...
...Nassau County there is none of the stultifying and alienating inertia of a jail District Attorney Denis E. Dillon sends free bus tokens to cell...
...For reasons of equity and practicality, being...
...the learning that many witnesses have received tickets because offender can circumvent a stiff jail term...
...but it was an open admission that the kind of violence the The Provisional militants believe that such measures, were British had to deal with was political, and could not be they brought in by the British, would lead to an upsurge of adequately dealt with by the ordinary courts...
...For most of history, the state has merely been an Two MEN assaulted and blinded a middle-aged man in intermediary between victim and offender, not until Norman London in 1951...
...Arizona's Pima County, restitution is used as an alternative to Although this more personalized form of compensation has jail for non-serious, first-time offenders...
...Pilot The desire to lighten the burdens on courts and prisons is a restitution programs have been established in Minnesota, major impetus for restitution programs...
...Even if we extrapoissue: most of the victims of violent crime-as well as most of late from this maximum, the highest estimate for the national the perpetrators-are poor...
...Ancient laws often specified the rates lings a week...
...40 million is the highest estisystem, although many conservatives who back these laws mate I have found for the federal bill, which will in all probawould balk at that terminology...
...For a mixed bag of conserweekly pay check...
...When he came to power he determined to Conservative party-was speculating on the possibility of end it...
...When the offender agrees to participate, he meets of crime victims...
...criminals are not caught and convicted...
...minimum-security facility...
...Pro-victim" criminologists have applauded these the prospects are very good-then the federal budget for 1980 developments of the year 1978: will provide matching funds of approximately 25 percent for -In February, the Supreme Court declared constitutional the thirty states which have established crime-victim compenthe practice of requiring youthful offenders to make repara- sation boards...
...ing good jobs and incurring great expense...
...tion Board has a $10,000 limit, for example...
...As a party founded on socialseveral years of careful and often subtle Labor party maneuver- democratic and socialist principles, they could not be seen to ing which has brought the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland to be engaged in an open colonial-type struggle...
...IRA as they would any other complex colonial-type situation...
...These NDAA units explain legal procedures to plains criminologist Burt Galaway...
...But the policy of Harold Wilson, to be dominated by two related concepts: "criminalization" and "Ulsterization...
...Thousands upon thousands of crimes go for compensation: financial need must be proved before funds unreported each year, and those victims who do report crimes are disbursed...
...British penal reformer Margery Fry made an of compensation: Hammurabi decreed that a thief of transoutraged calculation: "The victim," she wrote, "will need to ported goods must pay his victim five times their value, and in live another 442 years to collect the last installment...
...and the state avoids they couldn't find legal parking spaces...
...Unlikely supporters of the (under the influence of Northern Ireland Protestant Unionists) Conservative party, it might be thought...
...But this is a basic welfare bility match one-quarter of the state funds...
...Revenge and frontier justice are two of the When the victim cannot or will not participate, the offender seamier motives: a New York vigilante group, for example, in makes restitution to a "substitute victim," such as a hospital a perverse reversal of the notion of compensation, is offering a or charity...
...Vigilante groups have sprung up across the chronic psychiatric problems which may require expensive country to distribute their own brand of justice (most recently therapy and may impair learning power...
...poor, he often needs compensation...
...The logical way of not uncommon, and the New Jersey board, for example, must providing for criminally-inflicted injuries would be to tax dole out its $900,000 budget for claims which are expected to every adult citizen . . . to cover a risk to which each is reach $2 million by next year...
...AN END TO 'ULSTERIZATION...
...He lives at the MRC, and can attend vative and liberal reasons, thousands have taken up that cry in therapy and counseling sessions conducted by the MRC staff...
...Only 3,500 were given compensation...
...chinery...
...Recently Margaret Thatcher-leader of the Provisional IRA...
...they often rest on Bare-bones compensation laws such as these will, if rather arbitrary assumptions about the number of victims who adequately financed, fill a large gap in the nation's welfare will apply for compensation...
...The NDAA has established 133 units in 35 states the payment of a debt gives the offender a sense of self-worth to assist victims and witnesses who, in the words of one and of moving forward...
...Fry's outrage the victim-compensation move- most basic duty of the state is to protect the lives and property ment emerged...
...it lowers the recidivism victims and witnesses, provide transportation to and from rate because it gives the offender a "clear sense of accourt, supply babysitting services, and act as intermediaries complishment as he completes concrete requirements...
...Also, between the victim witness and his employer...
...Why can't we help the victims of the person he has mugged or burgled-but common to all is the violent crime too...
...Dillon has also set the inordinate expense of incarceration ($11,000 per year in .up a special phone number for those witnesses who are New York...
...offenders, whose probable poverty renders them "judgment- Mr...
...and because the state has failed in its basic against the state are, first and foremost, crimes against people...
...Other states place FRANCIS 1. FLAHERTY is a free-lpnce writer whose work has appeared limits on specific disbursements, such as funeral expenses...
...The Michigan Legislature passed a law last spring mak- The state laws and pending federal bills are very similar...
...Rodino...
...tion seems an ideal way to deal with crime...
...The medicare related" activities...
...A bitter ancient Rome a thief caught in flagrante paid double the value mockery...
...Their lives may become severely and expensively circumscribed...
...Hunwing Conservatives have been advocating the reintroduction dreds of Catholics had been arrested and imprisoned without of internment without trial, which was phased out in 1975 by trial...
...garet Thatcher...
...Yet, restitution pro- By arranging for young vandals, for example, to repaint the grams are a unique and growing device both for recompensing buildings or repair the windows they damaged, law officers the victim and for bestowing on the offender positive feelings insure that the victim is satisfied and that the offender is about his worth and a better-than-average chance of rehabilita- punished without recourse to official and expensive legal mation...
...often refuse to testify both because of the arduousness of the And the expenses for the victim can be enormous...
...At least $15 billion is spent on criminal justice in this people are not likely to have crime insurance...
...The greatest embarrassment of all was Ireland that decline might be arrested...
...Unreported crimes and uncooperative victims and witnesses increase the chances that crime will pay...
...The enough, is often a positive way of phrasing their enmity for Iowa Legislature likes the idea of restitution so much that it "soft" judges and "hard" criminals...
...J. L. Barkas, whose compelling...
...Carl Jahnke, Co-Chairman of the Internaand medicaid programs upon which they rely often do not tional Association of Crime Victim Compensation Boards, cover the extended and expensive medical and psychiatric care asks dyspeptically, "if these programs can fail for $15 billion, which frequently accompanies such crimes as rape or severe why can't they fail for $14 billion, so we can allocate the assault...
...Liberals can agree that for criminal rehabilitation, and lighten the burden on the crimvictims are underrepresented without also accepting the im- inal justice system, then so much the better...
...ing parents financially liable for acts of vandalism committed Their scope is remarkably narrow: they provide compensation by their childen...
...lent crime...
...Aside proceedings and because of the pervasive belief that "justice from costly treatment of physical injury, many victims endure won't be done...
...he is in fact justified to fret a little at this program in Multanomah County, Oregon, paid back $480,000 burgeoning compensation movement, which appeals to con- to crime victims in a year and a half and, in 1975, Colorado servatives whose concern for the victim, though genuine parolees paid back half a million dollars to their victims...
...Fry in her seminal article find a job, and he gradually reimburses his victim from his on the London blind man in 1951...
...EDERAL matching funds are needed if the state compensa- They are clearly deserving candidates for public funds, F tion boards are to minister effectively to these rather whether one reasons from a welfare philosophy or from the stringently-defined needs of violent-crime victims...
...The MRC staff helps the offender "Justice for Victims...
...COMPENSATION LAWS: LAST GAP IN OUR WELFARE SYSTEM For the victim, more than pity , FRANCIS J. FLAHERTY The idea of compensation is as old as the Code of Hammurabi...
...An added boon to compensation laws may forces which cause crime, often consider victim rights to be an be the American public's restored faith and greater involveideologically dangerous cause to espouse...
...Awarding the victim 11,500 pounds England did the focus of criminal justice shift from victim in damages, a British court ordered each of the two compensation to the modern notion that a crime is primarily an assailants to reimburse the blind man at the rate of five shil- offense against the state...
...Should their hopes be fulfilled, it would undermine much but Labor was not...
...Ironically, the organization of Irish Re- During that period the situation had developed from widepublican terrorists which recently killed the Conservative spread civil unrest to open guerrilla warfare...
...These prob- tween blacks and orthodox Jews), and audiences nationwide lems may ramify into other expenses: violent-crime victims applaud the vengeful lynch mentality of such recent films as Lipstick and Death Wish...
...Have we no better help to offer the victims of violent of the almost-stolen goods...
...the United States...
...This cynicism is a major impediment to the wheels of American justice...
...In person from whom he stole or whose property he damaged...
...Funds will be disbursed only stories to media moguls before the victims of that offender's if the victim cooperates fully with law enforcement agencies, crime were recompensed...
...200 bounty to anyone who kills his assailant...
...Their policy was the point of desperation...
...Under restitution, the offender gets to proceedings, is making its own contribution to the pro-victim know his victim and perhaps to empathize with him a little, and movement...
...the New Jersey Violent Crime Compensacrime-victim compensation boards...
...Rodino's words, violent property crimes, and who have three or fewer offenses, "entirely inadequate" as a method for the mass compensation are eligible...
...Most Rodino (D-N.J...
...It is Mr...
...Despite the reason for compensation laws: the restoration of faith in the crisscross of welfare programs in this country, most violent- American legal system...
...and has The Conservatives tackled the violence of the Provisional precipitated a decline in support for the various violent groups...
...Northern Ireland under Thatcher JACK HOLLAND Labor Prime Minister until 1976, when he resigned, to become effective had first to dismantle the legacies of the previous THE COMING general election in Great Britain should Conservative government which had to tackle the Northern bring a Conservative government to power under Mar- Ireland crisis when in office from 1970-74...
...Crime victims plicit conservative notion that criminals are overrepresented...
...The majority of those victims earn cost of violent-crime victim compensation is less than $200 less than $10,000 a year...
...into effective rehabilitation programs for the offender...
...with the British Army...
...aware of these compensation programs, the disparity between The Rodino bill and the state laws are both modest and funds and needs would be even greater...
...pushed through the House of Representatives states, regardless of the damages thee victim has suffered, place a bill to provide matching funds for those states which have a ceiling on claims...
...The militant Republicans -members of the Provisional IRA When Labor inherited the problem after they won the general and other factions-believe that if a new Conservative gov- election in 1974, they found the fruits of the Conservative ernment was true to the party's past record in Northern policy embarrassing...
...crime...
...And if, through restitution But, if anti-criminal tendencies can be checked, this move- programs, we can provide compensation, increase the chances ment is worthy of liberal attention...
...And it is unfortunate that many liberals, conCommonweal: 236 cerned with the criminal's rights and the broad socio-economic duty to protect him...
...Paranoia, insecurity in Crown Heights,Brooklyn, where there is great friction beand depression often linger long after the crime...
...conviction, that the criminal-justice system offers no justice for If the House and the Senate (whose frequently-passed the criminal's victim...
Vol. 106 • April 1979 • No. 8
