Restitution: Real Fine for Criminals
Lehrman, Karen
Restitution: Real Fine For Criminals by Karen Lehrman "Under our system of law," then-House Majority Whip Tony Coelho said last spring, "John Mack owed his debt to society, not to this...
...Mack had beaten the young woman over the head with a hammer and left her for dead...
...to seek compensation, a victim was forced to go through arduous and often prohibitively expensive civil court proceedings...
...His Earn-It program found offenders minimumwage, part-time jobs in the community (at department stores, grocery stores, car washes, gas stations—whichever local businesses would take them...
...for others, it was the first time they had borne responsibility...
...Rather than just leave the restitution up to the judge, many jurisdictions have adopted the "arbitration" method, which protects the offender against exaggerated claims and offers the victim a chance for real input...
...Many savings and loan executives, for example, could never in their lifetimes pay back all the people they robbed...
...Given these benefits of restitution, judges should have to require it in all cases involving damages...
...He might have had to sit Karen Lehrman is assistant editor of The New Republic...
...Federal judges and judges in 23 states are required either to order criminals to compensate their victims or to explain in writing their reasons for not doing so...
...Mack was making just over $5,000 a year when he attacked Small, but by the time the story broke last year he was earning roughly $89,500...
...The criminals gave two-thirds of their earnings to their victims until the debt was paid, keeping the rest...
...Some programs, like one run by the sheriff's department in Genesse County, New York, eliminate the middleman and have the criminal and victim negotiate face to face—even in cases involving violent crimes...
...there's a probation department that does creative restitution and community service sentencing...
...And there should be some mechanism so that the improverished criminal who comes into money later doesn't get off scot-free...
...One of the most innovative restitution programs was started in the Quincy, Massachusetts, District Court by Judge Albert Kramer in 1975...
...The idea of victim restitution resurfaced in the late 1960s, propelled by a general dissatisfaction with both institutionalization and probation...
...These guys usually wind up getting fined and serving some time...
...According to Burt Galloway, a professor of social work at the University of Minnesota, who has run several mediation programs, when the criminal meets his victim face-to-face he often apologizes—and he's more likely to pay back in full...
...Not only would a system like this better sensitize judges to the needs of victims, it would force them to use restititution in white-collar cases...
...Kramer thought there existed a better option for first-time offenders than putting them back on the streets or in jail...
...Besides sitting in jail for a few years more than the 27 months he served, shouldn't Mack have had to contribute something (like maybe everything he owned) to repair some of the damage he'd done...
...Victim-offender meetings also bring a feeling of closure...
...More than 500 jurisdictions now offer some type of victim restitution program, whether set up on the Quincy employment-focused model, on a work center model (for those who need incarceration), or on a more victim-oriented model (where paying off the victim is more important than finding the offender a job...
...If only symbolically...
...Throughout much of medieval times, restitution was the method of choice to recompense victims...
...The concept of victim restitution, of course, is hardly new...
...Restitution: Real Fine For Criminals by Karen Lehrman "Under our system of law," then-House Majority Whip Tony Coelho said last spring, "John Mack owed his debt to society, not to this young woman...
...The program was so successful—approximately 80 percent fulfilled their restitution obligations— that even offenders convicted of violent crimes were included...
...A fortunate side effect of this move was that the state got to keep all compensation...
...He might have been moved enough to apologize, which, in Small's words, "would have helped...
...In one of these programs, while incarcerated, Mack might have had to work off his victim's medical bills...
...In 1988, $350,000 passed from criminals to victims...
...Pamela Small's family paid thousands of dollars to have her face and skull reconstructed...
...And in the last few years, an almost underground system of victim restitution programs has sprung up across the country...
...Should Charles Keating get convicted, would you rather see him sitting around in the prison camp in Danbury, Connecticut, or, after putting in a little time, working off his debt in a downtown car wash...
...across a table from his victim and face up to what he'd done to her...
...Essentially, the two parties haggle, through a probation officer, over the appropriate restitution...
...For many offenders, it was their first job...
...In general, the victim's role in these programs has been growing, often out of sheer practicality...
...But in 1116, England's Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, made himself the victim of all criminal crimes...
...But just because they can't pay their victims back doesn't mean we shouldn't make them try...
...The role of the victim gradually disappeared from the criminal justice system...
...He put them to work...
...Besides the financial benefits, restitution is thought to bring psychological comfort to victims by restoring their sense of fairness and control over their lives...
...Now there is no longer an Earn-It program per se at Quincy court...
...Restitution could hold a crook accountable for his crime—benefitting the victim, the community, and perhaps even the offender...
...The department hands out about 1,000 restitution orders a year, at an average of $400 each...
...Today, Coelho's "logic" notwithstanding, he probably would have...
...But Mack, who subsequently became Jim Wright's right-hand man, had slashed the young woman's throat, not "society's...
...In the Bible, Zacchaeus, a corrupt tax collector, had to pay Israelites four times what he had taken from them and then give half of what he had left to the poor...
...The complexity and large amount of money involved in these cases currently discourage the use of restitiution...
Vol. 21 • January 1990 • No. 12
