Crime Victim Compensation

A revision of the author's thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Includes index. Bibliography: p. 111-116.

"Who qualifies, how to qualify, how to apply, how much is available, rights of relatives, who to contact"--Cover.

Topics covered include overview of victimology, victim services and witness assistance programs, missing and murdered children in America, crisis intervention with battered women and their children, police-based crisis teams, telephone hotline programs and services for family violence survivors.

This important new book on criminology is a major attempt to evaluate actual victim compensation programs as well as their political and economic contexts, through the eyes of the victims themselves.Elias traces the experiences of violent-crime victims throughout the entire criminal justice process, comparing New York's and New Jersey's victim compensation programs. He shows how programs differ when compensation is viewed essentially as welfare and when it is viewed as a right. The study uses extensive interviews with officials and with violent crime victims.The study indicates victim compensation programs largely fail to achieve their stated goals of improving attitudes toward the criminal-justice system and the government. The programs produce poor attitudes toward government and criminal justice.

Written by one of the world's leading experts on victimology, this book is designed to offer a broad introduction to the subject.