Post by The TodalPost by StePost by The TodalBut it's really no different from any member of the public suing for damages
for tripping on a paving stone, then having to pay that sum (or part of it)
to Barclaycard to settle his credit card bill.
It is different in that the general public are not all in hock to
Barclaycard, and so generally there is an incentive to sue where the
law has been breached. Prisoners, however, are virtually all in hock
to victims, according to the logic of civil recovery.
Not at all. Why should prisoners be in a *better* position than the public
at large?
They shouldn't. As I say, the public at large are not generally in
hock to creditors, in the way that almost all prisoners will be in
hock to victims. Because of this, prisoners as a group will
effectively be made outlaws, whom the state can then treat with
impunity.
Post by The TodalIf you are awarded damages for slipping on yogurt in Tesco, you
may feel obliged to hand that money over to the electricity board to pay
your bill and prevent them cutting off your supply. When one of your debtors
tries to execute judgment against you he will seize whatever money you have,
even if it is your hardwon compensation for an accident.
I accept that, but I do not view the situations as comparable. This is
clearly a situation of sound principles applied to produce a clearly
absurd result. The substantive effect of the law now is to say "The
state will compensate victims if the state treats their perpetrator
wrongfully in prison, and not othewise. Perpetrators will never be
compensated for any wrong done to them by the state." This cannot be a
healthy state of affairs.
Post by The TodalA prisoner has fewer outgoings than you, and may have no debts at all if he
has managed to repay the money he has stolen.
If he has committed a grievous crime such as murder and has ruined the lives
of several people, then he has a debt which he should be compelled to pay.
If the victims have received compensation from the Criminal Injuries
Compensation Authority, the money should be repaid by the criminal to the
state out of any assets he acquires, such as compensation for an injury. If
Holly and Jessica's families got 11k each under the law, then he should
probably pay no more than 22k to the state and should - probably - not have
to pay any money over and above what the law prescribes as compensation for
the death of a child. I am however very tempted to go further and say that
so paltry is the sum awarded for the death of a child that the criminal (if
convicted of serious GBH or murder) should also be liable for further sums
of compensation payable either to the victims or to a general victims
support fund.
I think in the end this is a fruitless logic. Few if any victims will
be compensated in the end, because a perpetrator would have little
incentive to sue in the first place for his own injuries, if he
expects to get nothing from it (and indeed, he could even make the
final insult to his victim, by specifically refusing to sue the state
for compensation because he knows that such a refusal will deprive his
victim in turn). And as I say, it would act as a cruel form of lottery
anyway - compensating only those victims whose perpetrator happens to
injure himself due to the state's failure to protect him. In fact,
that could even encourage violent attacks within prison against
heinous offenders, as inmates realise that an attack will yield
significant compensation for that offender's victim that they would
not otherwise receive.
Also, if the state could set off the compensation it pays to the
prisoner, from the criminal injuries compensation already paid to the
victim, then that would be even more perverse, because not only would
the criminal have no incentive to sue, but even if the prisoner sued
and won, the state would effectively be not paying any price at all
for their breach of the law. It would also then act simply as a
criminal fine on perpetrators, above and beyond the sentence already
imposed, with no corresponding benefit to the victim.
Post by The TodalPost by SteThat, as
Dissenter says, essentially puts prisoners in the position of having
no effective recourse to the law, and that is undesirable if we are
saying that prisoners ought to have recourse to the law, and that the
state ought to be bound by its own laws relating to the treatment of
prisoners.
I am sure there are many prisoners who don't much care for the money so long
as they have the excitement of a legal action against the establishment
which they end up winning and which will, probably, help to protect them
from further assaults (and a chap like Huntley must expect to be at risk of
being assaulted for the rest of his life).
But your logic does not withstand scrutiny. As I've shown above, the
perverse incentives that this introduces at every level, and the
capricious way in which a few "lucky" victims would be compensated,
makes a total mockery of the wider principles and goals of the law.
Post by The TodalPost by SteCertainly in the case of Iorworth Hoare, for example, his lottery win
was substantial, and was not a form of compensation for a wrong done
to him. No one has any particular interest in rapists playing or
winning the lottery, and there is certainly an argument that says he
ought to share some of his winnings with his victims if he does win.
But personally I find the notion of civil recovery distasteful anyway,
because in the vast majority of cases victims will not be able to
recover anything, and victims are effectively engaged in a lottery
themselves over whether their perpetrator will trip and fall in the
shower while in prison, thus yielding some compensation that the
victim can then seize.
You forget that if it is a crime of violence the compensation is paid to the
victim by the state, via CICA. That might of course fall short of the
damages that would be awarded in court but it is a lot better than nothing.
I don't know if the victim in the Hoare case had received a CICA award. The
rules of CICA mean that any compensation recovered from Mr Hoare would first
have to be used to repay CICA for whatever it has paid out.
Indeed.
Post by The TodalPost by SteThe effect of this compensation lottery for
victims can only aggravate the emotional wounds for those who aren't
lucky enough to recover, and the modest social benefits of
compensating those who are lucky enough to recover, is unlikely to
outweigh the various disbenefits.
I think you overstate the drawbacks.
Frankly, this whole issue is relatively small change as issues go, but
I maintain that the current arrangements are perverse.