Compensation for Victims of Criminal Violence - A Round Table (From Considering the Victim, P 198-219, 1975, Joe Hudson and Bart Galaway, ed. - See NCJ-27690)

• NCJ Number: 93218
• Author(s): H Silving
• Date Published: 1975
• Length: 22 pages
• Sale Source: Charles C. Thomas
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study considers various concepts associated with crime victim compensation, including responsibility based on guilt versus liability for damage, state preemption of the claim for indemnification, the offender's duty to compensate the victim by work, indirect methods of promoting indemnification of the victim, and special indemnification funds.

Abstract

The analysis of the Mexican experience of victim compensation demonstrates the necessary failure of a scheme where the state totally absorbs the victim's claim, since this involves the fallacy of identifying individual interests with community interests in modern society. The victim's claim for reparation of the damage suffered by crime must remain his/her own. Inmates work to earn money for compensating their victims may take a number of forms. Compulsory prison labor, the profits of which are wholly or partially assigned to a general compensation fund, carries the implication of the inmates' collective responsibility for crime in general. Such an approach, however, creates a closer tie between criminals as a group while failing to individualize and personalize the effects of criminal behavior for its victims. The practice of having individual offender's work to provide compensation for the particular victim damaged is constructive. This may also include work for the victim. The problems of such a system include conflicts between the offender's responsibility to provide for the financial needs of his/her own family and the responsibility to compensate the victim, as well as the inability of some offenders to provide monetary compensation sufficient to cover the entire damage suffered by the victim. This argues for the creation of a state fund to supplement the compensation provided by the offender. The establishment of such a fund through general taxation is to be preferred to its creation from general inmates' earning or fines. Care must be exercised that the use of this fund does not reduce emphasis upon the offender's responsibility to compensate victims. Extensive footnotes are provided.