Читать книгу Criminology For Dummies - Steven Briggs - Страница 74

After a convenience store clerk is shot during a robbery, how does he pay his medical bills? Today every state has a crime victim compensation program that helps victims pay their bills and cope with the aftermath of the crime. Typically, victim compensation programs are payers of last resort, meaning that a victim must exhaust his own personal health insurance first. Here are just a few of the expenses victim compensation programs can reimburse victims for:

 Medical care

 Lost wages

 Grief counseling

 Funeral expenses

 Injury rehabilitation

 Counseling for kids who witness crime

To be eligible for compensation, a person must be an innocent victim, meaning that he didn’t contribute to the criminal activity in any way. Also, he must fully cooperate with law enforcement. Victim service providers employ compensation officers to make sure victims’ claims are valid. (You may not be surprised to learn that people try to defraud the victim compensation system — which is about as low as stealing from an offering plate.)

Because the amount of funds in these programs is limited, so too is the amount of compensation a victim can get. And the type of compensation varies by state. For example, Texas excludes compensation for property crimes and limits the total amount to $50,000. Reimbursement for pain and suffering and emotional distress is also excluded.

Money to support compensation programs comes from a variety of sources. One of those sources is the criminals themselves: Federal and state governments collect fines and fees from all criminal defendants when they’re found guilty. In addition, if a defendant causes a victim’s injury and that victim receives some compensation from the state’s victim compensation program, the judge can make the defendant pay back the costs to the program.

For example, when the robber who shoots the convenience store clerk is found guilty, the judge can order him to repay the compensation program for any money forwarded to the clerk for his medical costs. In addition, the clerk has the legal right to file a civil lawsuit against the robber for the full amount of his medical costs and for all his pain and suffering. As a practical matter, however, most robbers don’t have any money to pay large judgments; plus, they usually end up in prison for awhile, where they don’t earn enough to repay the costs. Nonetheless, some states employ collection officers to go after criminals and collect these funds if they’re available. I have seen an inmate in prison inherit a large sum of money that was used to reimburse his victim.