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In this video, Jeremy Levine, Faculty Associate in the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics at ISR, explains why victim compensation laws often fail to benefit victims of crime.

I study the inequalities in the criminal legal system. Specifically, I study laws that are supposed to benefit crime victims. But what I find in my research is that they often fail to do so, and more specifically, are more designed to punish, quote unquote, criminals rather than help victims.

If you’re a victim of a crime anywhere in the country, and suffer from personal bodily injury, you may be eligible for something called victim compensation. Victim compensation laws exist in every state across the country. They are intended to pay for crime victims out-of-pocket expenses. Specifically, these laws are limited to innocent victims of crime, which means “innocent,” “victims,” and “crime” all need to be defined and verified by someone. And, with some nuance across the country, by and large, those aspects of eligibility for these laws are determined by the police.

What my research shows is that for things like verifying that a crime actually occurred, victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, what we would call gender based violence, are far more likely to be questioned and scrutinized by police and not seen as actually a victim. As a result, certain victims, particularly victims of gender based violence, are far less likely than other victims to be compensated, even when we might think of them as being fully and wholly deserving of these resources.

One thing I’m really excited about in this research is a new partnership that myself, colleagues here at the University of Michigan, and colleagues at University of Colorado Denver have with the Office of Victim Services in New York. Thanks to generous support from Arnold Ventures, and support here at ISR, we are working on an evaluation of a new law change that happened in New York.

Applicants for victim compensation in New York will no longer be required to have a police report in order to be eligible. They no longer will be required to cooperate with police. They can apply through a victim service provider instead of having a police report to assess and determine that they were truly a victim and an innocent victim.

There’s a big open question of what that means for the program. Does it mean that more people will apply? Does it mean that more people will be approved? Does it mean that victims of certain crimes, like domestic violence or sexual assault or, gun violence, will now, without the police intervention affecting their eligibility, be more likely to be approved?

We think that’s going to have really great lessons for states across the country that may still be hanging on to what I would argue is a faulty logic, and to what our evidence also suggests is unequal effects of some of these eligibility criteria. This evidence may suggest and may give them more reason to rethink those criteria to reshape these laws to benefit the most victims possible.

Related: Justice after trauma? Race, red tape keep sexual assault victims from compensation