Opinion ID: 1174723
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: restitution as a criminal sentencing sanction

Text: An introduction in a publication of the National Institute of Justice, Compensating Victims of Crime: An Analysis of American Programs (1983), reports: In a wide variety of societies throughout history, restitution has been a central principle of criminal law. Failure to make restitution could result in retributory punishment of the offender by the victim or the victim's kin group. Over time, as the power of governments increased, the state sought to obtain the sole power of retribution in order to reduce the violence associated with citizens `taking the law into their own hands.'    (Footnote omitted.) See also Edelhertz and Geiz, Public Compensation to Victims of Crime (1974); Carrow, Crime Victim Compensation: Program Model (U.S. Government Printing Office 1980); and Hoelzel, A Survey of 27 Victim Compensation Programs, 63 Judicature 10 (1980). Some 20 years ago, Professor Marvin Wolfgang commented in a Minnesota Law Review article about the change in sanctions from restitution to fines: Gradually the social group began to take charge of punishment, and wrongs came to be regarded as injuries to the group or to the state. The king claimed a part of this [restitution] payment or an additional payment for the participation of the state in the trial and for the injury done to the state by the disturbance of the peace. About the twelfth century the victim's share began to decrease greatly    until finally the king took the entire payment. Thus, the right of the victim to receive compensation directly from the one who caused him personal harm in an assault was transferred to the collective society where it remains to this day.    Wolfgang, Victim Compensation in Crimes of Personal Violence, 50 Minn L Rev 223, 228 (1965). A recent Harvard Law Review Note echoed the historical fact that there is nothing new about restitution as a sentencing sanction and that restitution as a sanction is being resurrected throughout the country. The author noted that far from being a novel approach to sentencing, restitution has been employed as a punitive sanction throughout history. In ancient societies, before the conceptual separation of civil and criminal law, it was standard practice to require an offender to reimburse the victim or his family for any loss caused by the offense. [2] The author wrote:    The primary purpose of such restitution was not to compensate the victim, but to protect the offender from violent retaliation by the victim or the community. It was a means by which the offender could buy back the peace he had broken. As the state gradually established a monopoly over the institution of punishment, and a division between civil and criminal law emerged, the victim's right to compensation was incorporated into civil law. Although this development led to a decline in the use of restitution as a form of punishment, restitution continued to be available on a limited basis in the Anglo-American criminal system. Many of the earliest penal codes in the United States included restitution provisions, and in 1913 the Supreme Court, in Bradford v. United States, [228 US 446, 33 S Ct 576, 57 L Ed 912 (1913)], sanctioned restitution as a condition on a pardon. By providing for restitution in the penal sections of state codes and authorizing it as a sentencing option in addition to fines or imprisonment or as a condition on parole or probation, today's legislatures have preserved restitution as a criminal penalty. Note, Victim Restitution in the Criminal Process: A Procedural Analysis, 97 Harv L Rev 931, 933-34 (1984) (footnotes omitted).