Week 4: Compensation for victims

This unit has three main themes running through this unit. The first, encapsulated in the idea of the I***l V****m, has to do with how we think about victims. We've seen how entrenched some assumptions about victims are, and - more importantly - how unhelpful those assumptions can be. The second has to do with the criminal justice system, and how difficult it is to fit victims into it: the victim doesn't belong on either side of the confrontation between the Crown and the offender, and often ends up, literally, serving as a witness to her own victimisation. Following on from this, the third them has to do with restorative justice, and the broader challenge of taking a victim-centred approach to crime. Actual victims - ordinary people who happen to become victims of crime - want, and need, many different things: some victims are vengeful, some are forgiving; some are knocked flat by the after-effects of the crime, some shrug it off; some want to take an active part in the prosecution of the crime, some want to put it all behind them. The only thing all victims have in common is that they want to be taken seriously, listened to (if they want to talk), given support (if they need it) - in short, treated with respect.

Last week's lecture (apologies for the delay in getting this post up) involved all those three themes. As we saw, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is explicitly designed to exclude anyone who doesn't co-operate with the police and anyone with a 'bad character' - which is to say (among other things) anyone who has served a custodial sentence of any length within the last seven years. (Hard luck if you go to prison for non-payment of debts and get beaten up a year later.) Only the innocent and virtuous need apply, in effect.

The other main form of compensation is the Compensation Order, which can be handed down by courts as part of a criminal sentence. This is a vivid illustration of the inadequacy of the criminal justice system to give victims what they need. Remember the dark figure of crime: not all crimes are reported to the police; not all of those are detected, i.e. have an offender identified; not all of those are prosecuted, and (inevitably) not all prosecutions lead to a guilty verdict. But it's only a guilty verdict that can lead to the imposition of a Compensation Order. Even when the option is available - and courts are encouraged to impose it when it is there - in practice most sentences don't include compensation, often because the offender would be unable to pay. Putting it all together, the criminal justice system can only provide compensation, in the form of a Compensation Order, for a tiny, tiny minority of victims.

Coming on to the question of respect and victim-centrality: when compensation is awarded, how much should it be? This is a difficult one. Somebody who has had a leg broken in three places, suffering permanent impairment as a result, isn't going to want to be fobbed off with a ten pound note. But suppose a more satisfactory order was made - £10,000, say. (The maximum compensation payable for this injury under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme is currently set at £4,600, incidentally.) Would accepting this level of compensation mean that you were saying the leg was worth £10,000 (or £4,600)? It's not a calculation anyone would want to make. I think we have an instinctive sense of when monetary compensation is far too low, without having a clear sense of what the right level would be. The reason is the message that it conveys - the point of a very low amount is that it conveys a lack of respect. Similarly, research has shown - perhaps surprisingly - that victims don't object to compensation payments being spread out over a long period, if there is no other way that the offender can pay. What victims do object to is not knowing how long the period will be or what the payments will be: in short, they object to being kept in the dark, treated with disrespect.

But even if the payments are scaled satisfactorily and made on time, both the main compensation schemes are wildly inadequate. Victims need respect, which may mean looking at alternatives to criminal justice; and they need support, in the form of a universal and unconditional service for victims. Which are the topics of the next two lectures.