Offender and state compensation for victims of crime
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| Author | David Miers |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758013508683 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Offender and state
compensation for victims of
crime: Two decades of
development and change
David Miers
Cardiff University, UK
Abstract
This article comp rises an overview of the principal normative and operational issues that arise
in both common and civil law states’ arrangements for the compensation and reparation of
victims of crime. Balancing what are inevitably generalized statements about jurisdictions
within federal common law countries and within the European Union, the article illustrates
these issues with details drawn from the civil and criminal justice systems of England and
Wales. The article begins with some general observations about the ways in which com-
pensation and reparation by offenders and compensation by the state form elements in a
state’s overall objectives for victims within its criminal justice system, and addresses the
question of what we might understand by ‘compensation’ in a criminal justice context, and
how that sits with civil justice. For this purpose ‘compensation’ may be understood both in
the compendious sense of any offender or state financial payment in respect of a victim’s loss
or injury or of the offender’s direct or indirect restoration of stolen or damaged property,
and in its discrete sense of a purely monetary response distinct from the non-monetary
responses that characterize ‘reparation’ responses now widely associated with restorative
justice. The article provides some detail on compensation and reparation by offenders as
forms of criminal justice disposals, and on the scope and the functions of state compensation
schemes.
Keywords
Offender compensation, state compensation, victims
Corresponding author:
David Miers, Emeritus Professor, Cardiff Law School UK, 3 Royal Chase, Dringhouses, York YO24 1ILN, UK.
Email: miers@cf.ac.uk
International Review of Victimology
2014, Vol 20(1) 145–168
ªThe Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758013508683
irv.sagepub.com
145
Introduction
ThiscontributiontotheInternational Review of Victimology’s 20th anniversary edition reviews
the developments that have taken place over the past two decades in the philosophies and the
operation of national criminal justice arrangements for offender and state compensation to vic-
tims of crime. Although these are very broadly drawn matters, I considerthe themes to be recog-
nizably common to and often contentious for all states whose criminal justice systems aim to
respond to crime victims’ interests. At a normative level they include the purposes of compen-
sating and of punishing harms and the relationship between them, the role of the state in making
and justifying the arrangements necessary to deliver reparation and compensation to injured vic-
tims, whether funded by offenders or taxpayers, and the role of these arrang ements alongside
those giving effect to other, potentially conflicting, criminal or civil justice objectives. At an
operational level they include such questions as what offences might be regarded as warra nting
either offender or state compensation, the criteria of victim eligibility, how harms or injuries are
to be assessed, how the responsible executive and judicial agencies can be encouraged to imple-
ment these arrangements, and, not least, what impact they may have upon victims and, where
they are the source of funds, offenders. Many of these themes equally apply to the compensation
and reparation outcomes that are now routine elements of restorative justice, where their rela-
tionship with its widely held objectives for the moral re-education of offenders is not always
comfortable.
I deal in this article with the compensation and reparation arrangements for crimes com-
mitted within the state’s jurisdiction.
1
I do not deal with international arrangements for the
reparation of victims after violent conflicts, which is the subject of Stephan Parmentier’s
review. Even so, it will be seen that similar normative and operational issues arise in those
cases, exacerbated by such evidentially complex and politically charged matters as the iden-
tification of victims and offenders, the allocation of state and insurgent responsibility for
harm, and the amenability of those responsible to international jurisdiction. I begin with some
general observations about the ways in which compensation and reparation by offenders and
compensation by the state form elements in its overall objectives for victims within its crim-
inal justice system. This section also addresses the question of what might we understand by
‘compensation’ in a criminal justice context, and how that sits with civil justice. The third
section deals with compensation and reparation by offenders and the fourth with state com-
pensation. The final section draws together some general conclusions about these various
arrangements.
I use the word ‘compensation’ both in the compendious sense of any offender or state
financial payment in respect of a victim’s loss or injury or of the offender’s direct or indirect
restoration of stolen or damaged property, and in its discrete sense of a purely monetary
response distinct from the non-monetary responses that characterize ‘reparation’. In a single
article it is impossible to do justice to all of the issues that are raised by the themes mentioned
above, and still less to consider them in the context of the many jurisdictions that have
arrangements for these matters. I endeavour to reflect their reality as evidenced within the
common law and within the civil law jurisdictions of the European Union, balancing what
are inevitably generalized statements with details drawn from the civil and criminal justice
systems of England and Wales. I cite a number of articles that have appeared in the Revie w
since its first publication in 1991 as evidence of its contribution to our understanding of
development and change around this topic.
146 International Review of Victimology 20(1)
146
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