Victim Compensation Policy and White Collar Crime
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
RESEARCH ARTICLE VICTIM COMPENSATION AND WHITE-COLLAR CRIME Victim Compensation Policy and White- Collar Crime Public Preferences in a National Willingness-to-Pay Survey Miranda A. Galvin University of Maryland—College Park Thomas A. Loughran Pennsylvania State University Sally S. Simpson University of Maryland—College Park Mark A. Cohen Vanderbilt University Research Summary We use survey data from a nationally representative sample to explore public sup- port for taxpayer-funded victim compensation programs for financial fraud, consumer fraud, identity theft, and burglary. We use contingent valuation (willingness-to-pay) methodology to infer preferences for compensation programs and explore predictors of those preferences. Overall, our findings reveal that the public strongly supports the implementation of victim compensation programs. Our results also indicate, however, that this support may be driven in part by perceptions of benefiting from this program directly in the future. Additionally, a small but notable minority of respondents exhibit preferences for programs without compensation. This project was supported by Award 2013-IJ-CX-0058, granted by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice. All code and analyses conducted as part of this article are available by request. Direct correspondence to Miranda A. Galvin, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, 2220 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742 (e-mail: [email protected]). DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12379 C 2018 American Society of Criminology 553 Criminology & Public Policy Volume 17 Issue 3 Research Article Victim Compensation and White-Collar Crime Policy Implications Our findings suggest that the general public is supportive of restitutive compensation programs, not only as paid for by offenders but also as paid for by the government. We suggest that policy makers may seek to extend victim compensation funds to white-collar crimes, which may otherwise be more financially damaging than traditional crimes. Keywords victim compensation, public preferences, willingness to pay, white-collar crime, fraud stimates of the cost of crime to victims range into hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet, crime victims seldom receive full compensation for the monetary harms they E endure, such as property loss or damage, lost wages, medical, or mental health care costs. Indeed, restitution is not mandatory in all jurisdictions, and even when it is, judges often reduce the amount based on the offender’s ability to pay. 1 Beginning in the 1960s, various government-sponsored victim compensation funds were established to augment restitution (Kauffman and Samuels, 2014). Given the limited fnancial means of many offenders (Rabuy and Kopf, 2015), and the limited victim compensation program funding that relies mainly on offender fnes and penalties, relying upon restitution and/or victim compensation programs is unlikely to provide adequate funding to ensure victims are restored to their previctimization fnancial state. For example, victim compensation programs provide an estimated $500 million annually to 200,000 victims, which is only a small fraction of the millions of Americans who are victimized by crimes in the United States (see the National Association of Crime Victim Compensation Board website: nacvcb.org/index.asp). Anderson (2012) estimated that crime victims lose $14.7 billion annually in wages alone. The most recent victimization survey (Truman and Morgan, 2016: Table 6) estimated that only 9% of violent crime victims receive any form of assistance from victim assistance programs (including assistance in obtaining restitution and/or victim compensation). To increase victim compensation funding would likely require additional revenue sources beyond the current stream of penalties and fnes.2 Not only are crime victims underserved by victim compensation programs, but also these programs are limited in the scope of crimes included. Programs seldom cover victims of burglary, theft, and fraud, and compensation is generally unavailable for victims who were not physically injured (Kauffman and Samuels, 2014). Yet the costs of consumer fraud are 1. Cohen (2005) cited data indicating that restitution is ordered in only approximately 15% of felony convictions, and even when ordered, only half of the amounts ordered are collected. 2. Although currently approximately $600 million annually is diverted from direct victim compensation from the Crime Victims Fund to other forms of victim assistance-related grants, even this level of funding would not come close to satisfying the potential need. See Statement of Congressman Bob Goodlatte, House Judiciary Committee Oversight Hearings, June 8, 2017 (judiciary.house.gov/press-release/goodlatte-statement-hearing-department-justices-grant-programs/). 554 Criminology & Public Policy Galvin et al. high. For example, Cohen (2016) estimated the out-of-pocket costs to victims of identity theft (aside from the cost to banks and other organizations who bear the largest direct costs) total $13 to $32 billion, whereas the cost of consumer fraud is estimated to range between $4 and $12 billion. These costs far outweigh the funds currently available for victim compensation programs. In a recent study of victim compensation programs, Evans (2014: 17) recommended that state programs “address victims of other types of prevalent crime, including fnancial fraud.” Some scholars have argued that the scope of property crimes would create a compensation program so large, and (presumably) easy to take advantage of, that “where it is the taxpayer who funds the arrangements, [compensation programs for nonviolent crime] are fnancially and thus politically prohibitive” (Miers, 2014: 156). This assumption, however, may not be an accurate representation of public support for victim compensation programs for nonviolent crimes. In fact, there is scant empirical research on the degree of public support for victim compensation programs in general, despite the existence of some compensation programs for more than three decades (Cohen, 2005; Miers, 2014). Furthermore, we are unaware of any evidence on whether taxpayer-funded programs have public support. In studying how the public tends to view victim compensation for crimes, scholars have been primarily concerned with public acceptance for restitution, or the fnancial payment to victims by offenders, as a punishment alternative. Researchers have generally found broad public support for fnancial over carceral sanctions, both in the United States (e.g., Bae, 1991, 2000; Doble, 1987; Doble and Klein, 1989; Knowles, 1987; Umbreit, 1994) and internationally (e.g., Boer and Sessar, 1989; Doob and Roberts, 1988; Galaway, 1994a, 1994b). A general gap in this literature concerns how the public views victim compensation provided through government programs, rather than as part of an offender’s sentence, as a policy option. In this study, we provide evidence on whether the public supports taxpayer- funded victim compensation programs, and we test hypotheses that individuals should tend to be more supportive of a crime reduction policy that includes allotments for victim compensation by relying on assumptions of altruism and social preferences for fairness. A large body of research comprises evidence for altruism (seemingly non–utility-maximizing behavior that results in a beneft to another person). Yet, observed behavior nominally labeled as “altruism” may also stem from rational, self-benefting considerations, or, what are generally recognized as social preferences (Charness and Rabin, 2002). It may be that public support for compensation programs is not driven by social preferences for fairness or a general willingness to beneft others, but instead could stem from perceptions that these policies will directly beneft them based on past experience or expectations for the future. These motivations are at odds, but they underscore a question at the core of many victim compensation programs—are these programs funded out of empathy and desire to insulate the victim from extended harm (e.g., Ministry of Justice, 2012: para. 149)? Or are victim compensation programs a form of public insurance against our “statistically determinable risk of victimization” (Miers, 2014: 155). Volume 17 Issue 3 555 Research Article Victim Compensation and White-Collar Crime We attempt to unpack these conficting motivations for supporting publicly funded victim compensation by using data from a nationally representative survey eliciting indi- viduals’ willingness to pay to reduce several types of white-collar crimes (fnancial fraud, consumer fraud, identity theft) in which multiple program options are offered and com- pared to evaluate general levels of support for publicly managed victim compensation programs. Furthermore, we consider whether preferences for victim compensation vary by certain attributes, including type of crime, situation of victim, individual victimization, and perceived risk of personal victimization. We also consider the degree to which, above and beyond these individual characteristics, public support is sensitive to the way in which information about victimization and policy packages are framed. White-collar crime provides a unique framework for an initial study of this problem. Although there