Making Restitution Real. Five Case Studies on Improving Resitution Collection

摘要

Across the country, policymakers, criminal justice officials, and victim advocates are becoming increasingly attuned to the problem of uncollected victim restitution. Even when ordered by the court, restitution often goes uncollected and victims remain without the financial resources they need to rebuild their lives after crime. While most jurisdictions do not track the amount of restitution ordered or collected (a problem itself), existing reports indicate a widespread failure to collect vast amounts of victim restitution. The most recent public figures show uncollected criminal debt at the federal level to be over $50 billionmost of which is restitution owed to individuals and others harmed by defendants. A study released in 2005 by the Government Accountability Office examined five high-dollar white collar financial fraud cases and found that only about seven percent of the restitution ordered in those cases was collected, up to eight years after the offenders sentencing. The experience at the state level is equally discouraging. In Iowa, for example, outstanding court debt, including restitution, amounted to $533 million as of 2010. Recent figures show that in Maryland, the Division of Parole and Probation had collected only 12 percent of the restitution that judges had ordered in fiscal year 2007 by December of 2008. In Texas, a 2008 examination found that more than 90 percent of offenders discharged from parole between 2003 and 2008 still owed their victims restitution. In Pennsylvania, $638 million in restitution was outstanding; in Arizona, the amount of unpaid criminal debt, including restitution, totaled $831 million; and in a single Nevada county, $70 million in victim restitution went uncollected during an eight year period.