Victimology: the European experience

1. Margery Fry and the idea of state compensation

Margery Fry, an English penal reformer, argued in Arms of the Law (1951) and in an article titled “Justice for Victims” in The Observer (1957) that the offender's civil liability to compensate was usually worthless, because most offenders are poor, and that the State, having forbidden private revenge and failed to prevent the crime, should compensate victims of violence. The argument drew on the welfare state: the community insures its members against misfortune, and violent crime is one such misfortune.

2. The United Kingdom

• Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, 1964: set up by the Government without legislation, as an act of grace, and administered by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. It paid victims of crimes of violence on the basis of common law damages, whether or not the offender was caught or convicted.
• Criminal Justice Act, 1988 provided a statutory basis, but those provisions were not brought into force.
• Criminal Injuries Compensation Act, 1995: placed the scheme on a statutory footing with a tariff system, fixed sums for each type of injury, plus loss of earnings and special expenses in serious cases. It is administered by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, with appeals to a tribunal. The scheme has been revised several times since.
• Key conditions: the injury must result from a crime of violence; the claim must usually be made within two years; the victim must have reported the crime and cooperated with the police; compensation may be reduced for the victim's own conduct or criminal record.

3. Compensation orders

Separately from the state scheme, English criminal courts can order the offender to compensate the victim for personal injury, loss or damage. The power was put on a general footing by the Criminal Justice Act, 1972 and the Powers of Criminal Courts Act, 1973, and is now in the Sentencing Act, 2020. A court must consider making a compensation order in every case where there is a victim, and must give reasons if it does not. Compensation takes priority over a fine when the offender cannot pay both. This is the English counterpart of section 395 BNSS; the Indian Supreme Court used the same “consider in every case, give reasons” approach in Ankush Shivaji Gaikwad (2013).

4. Victim support and victims' rights in Britain

• Victim Support, a voluntary organisation started in Bristol in 1974, grew into a national service offering emotional and practical help; witness services in courts followed.
• Victim's Charter (1990, revised 1996): set standards of service from the police, prosecution and courts.
• Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, 2004: required a statutory Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (the Victims' Code), which sets out entitlements to information, referral to support, a victim personal statement, and special measures in court, and created a Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.
• Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, 1999: special measures for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses, such as screens, live links and video-recorded evidence.
• Victims and Prisoners Act, 2024: put the principles of the Victims' Code on a statutory footing and strengthened oversight of compliance.

5. Continental Europe

• The partie civile: in France and other civil law systems the victim may join the criminal proceedings as a civil party, with rights to access the file, be represented and claim damages in the same trial. Some systems allow the victim to start a prosecution. This gives the victim a formal role that the common law adversarial trial did not.
• State compensation laws: for example Germany's Crime Victims Compensation Act (Opferentschädigungsgesetz, 1976), which treats compensation as part of social welfare, and France's compensation commissions (CIVI).
• Council of Europe Convention on the Compensation of Victims of Violent Crimes, 1983: requires States parties to compensate, from public funds, victims of intentional violent crime who have suffered serious bodily injury or impairment of health, and the dependants of those killed, where compensation is not fully available from other sources.
• Council of Europe Recommendation R (85) 11 on the position of the victim in criminal law and procedure: police training, information, consideration of compensation by the court, and protection of privacy.
• European Union: the Council Directive of 2004 on compensation to crime victims (cross-border cases), and Directive 2012/29/EU establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime: the right to understand and be understood, to information, to support services, to be heard, to review a decision not to prosecute, to protection from secondary victimisation, and to individual assessment of protection needs.

6. Lessons for India

The European pattern has three parts: state compensation independent of conviction; offender-paid compensation considered in every case; and participation and support rights for the victim. India adopted the first through section 357A CrPC (now section 396 BNSS) in 2009, has had the second since the old section 545 CrPC 1898 (now section 395 BNSS), and is building the third through the victim's right to be heard, to engage counsel and to appeal. What India lacks is a statutory victims' code with enforceable service standards.

How this is examined

“Explain the criminal injuries compensation scheme in United Kingdom” (October 2023, 10 marks) and “Explain the remedies available to victims in different countries” (October 2023). For the UK question, use sections 1 to 4 in order. For the comparative question, take Europe from this note and North America from the next, and close with section 6. The syllabus heading “European experience” also allows a question on the partie civile or on the Council of Europe Convention as a short note.