Victims & Witnesses
Victims of crime consultation paper
A consultation paper has been published by the Home Office that aims to radically improve the services offered to victims of crime. A new national Victims Fund has been proposed, that will be used to provide a broader and more effective range of services.
Title: Compensation and support for victims of
crime
Author: Home Office
Number of pages: 64
Date published: January 2004
Working in conjunction with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS), the Fund will ensure that victims can access a variety of support services tailored to their needs. Measures are also being taken forward to ensure that the CICS is administered as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. Coupled with new legislation, this will ensure the delivery of a new and improved service and is expected to raise an extra £25 million for victims of crime.
The consultation paper sets out how resources could best be used to better meet the needs of victims of crime. It seeks views on a number of proposals:
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Making offenders pay more towards compensation and support for victims through:
- placing a surcharge on criminal convictions and Fixed Penalty Notices for criminal offences. This will exclude parking offences and all civil penalty notices.
- making wider use of court compensation orders. -
Introducing a right for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to recover money from offenders.
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The best way to compensate those criminally injured in the course of duty. The paper asks whether responsibility for compensating workers injured on duty should be transferred to certain employers.
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The best way to compensate those who experience trauma as a result of suicide on the railway and those who are accidentally injured when taking exceptional risk. The paper suggests that these might be compensated by the employer rather than the scheme for victims of crime.
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Working in partnership with the insurance industry and alcohol industry to improve safety measures, prevent victimisation and consider ways to reduce victimisation such as sponsoring local victims' schemes.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme provides compensation to blameless victims of crimes of violence. The original scheme was set up in 1964, and was non-statutory, with compensation being assessed on the basis of common law damages. The scheme was made statutory in 1996, from which time compensation has been assessed on the basis of a scale of awards for injuries of comparable severity. The Government of the day made the change to stop the costs of the scheme rising at a rate that was no longer sustainable for a scheme funded by the taxpayer. The scheme covers Great Britain. There is a separate scheme in Northern Ireland, modelled very closely on the GB one. Under the tariff scheme more than 40,000 awards are now made each year and some £160m is paid out in compensation
Proposals within the paper build on the "National Strategy for Victims and Witnesses" published in July 2003.
Further Information
Download
" Compensation and support for victims of
crime" from the Home Office website 
PDF 1.86Mb
The closing date for comments on the proposals in the paper is 29 March 2004. Please send your comments to:
Mike Carson Victims Unit Home Office 50 Queen Anne's Gate London SW1H 9AT Email: michael.carson4@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk Tel: 020 7273 2276
Last update: 13/01/04