This unit has three main themes running through this unit. The first, encapsulated in the idea of the Ideal Victim,
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 Friday's lecture 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.
And that's where we're
going with the next lecture, which will be a guest lecture from Emma Golden of Victim
Support. It's a real privilege to hear from somebody who's actually working with VS: be there!
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