GAINING RESTITUTION FROM OFFENDERS
Back to Basics
A renewed interest in restitution developed during the 1970s. Restitution takes place whenever injured parties are repaid by the individuals who are directly responsible for their losses. Offenders return stolen goods to their rightful owners, hand over equiva- lent amounts of money to cover out-of-pocket expenses, or perform direct personal services to those they have harmed. Community service is a type of restitution designed to make amends to society as a whole. Usually it entails offenders working to “right some wrongs,” repairing the damage they are responsible for, cleaning up the mess they made, or laboring in order to benefit
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some worthy cause or group. Symbolic restitu- tion to substitute victims seems appropriate when the immediate casualties can’t be identified or located, or when the injured parties don’t want to accept the wrongdoers’ aid (Harris, 1979). Crea- tive restitution, an ideal solution, comes about when offenders, on their own initiative, go beyond what the law asks of them or their sentences require, exceed other people’s expectations, and leave their victims better off than they were before the crimes took place (Eglash, 1977).
As a legal philosophy, assigning a high priority to restitution means the financial health of victims will no longer be routinely overlooked, neglected, or sacrificed by a system ostensibly set up to deliver “justice for all.” Criminal acts are more than symbolic assaults against abstractions like the social order or public safety.” Offenders shouldn’t be prosecuted solely on behalf of the state or the people. They don’t only owe a debt to society. They also have incurred a debt to the flesh- and-blood individuals who suffer economic hard- ships because of illegal activity. Fairness demands that individuals who have been harmed be made whole again by being restored to the financial condition they were in before the crime occurred (see Abel and Marsh, 1984).
In about one-third of the states, judges are required to order felons convicted of violent acts to pay restitution as part of their sentences. Resti- tution can be imposed for out-of-pocket (unreim- bursed) losses directly stemming from the crime, including charges for medical expenses, prescription drugs, counseling, and therapy; lost earnings from missing work; replacement or repairs for stolen or damaged property; bills for crime scene clean-ups; expenses from participating in the criminal justice process (such as for transportation and child care); and money to cover insurance policy deductibles (NCVC, 2004).
Usually, wrongs can be righted in a straight- forward manner. Adolescent graffiti artists scrub off their spray-painted signatures. Burglars repay cash for the goods they have carted away. Embezzlers return stolen funds to the business they looted. Occasionally, client-specific punishments are imposed,
tailored to fit the crime, the offender, and unmet community needs. For example, a drunk driver responsible for a hit-and-run collision performs several months of unpaid labor in a hospital emer- gency room to see firsthand the consequences of his kind of recklessness. A teenage purse snatcher who preys on the elderly spends his weekends doing volunteer work at a nursing home. A lawyer caught defrauding his clients avoids disbarment by spending time giving legal advice to indigents unable to pay for it. Such sentences anger those who are convinced that imprisonment is the answer and fervently believe, “If you do the crime, you must do the time.” But imaginative dispositions that substitute restitution and commu- nity service for confinement are favored by refor- mers who want to reduce jail and prison overcrowding, cut the tax burden of incarceration, and shield first-time and minor offenders from the corrupting influences of the inmate subculture (“Fitting Justice?,” 1978; “When Judges Make the Punishment Fit the Crime,” 1978; and Seligmann and Maor, 1980).