Abstract
Abstract SwedishUnder efterkrigstiden förändrades många västerländska länders kriminalpolitik i riktning mot välfärd och rehabilitering. Detta ideal fokuserade gärningsmannen, inte brottsoffret. Detta skulle snart komma att förändras. En av de första initiativ som togs för brottsoffer var brottsskadeersättning, en ekonomisk kompensation som infördes på 1960-talet. Denna artikel jämför utvecklingen av brottsskadeersättningi två länder, USA och Sverige, i relation till deras välfärds- och kriminalpolitik. Båda länderna initierade kompensationsreformer för brottsoffer ivälfärdsinstitutionella kontexter. Med stöd i en jämförande historisk fallstudiemetod visar artikeln dock att kompensationsreformerna i de två länderna skilde sig åt och kom att avspegla respektive lands välfärds- och kriminalpolitik. De första svenska kompensationsreformerna förankrades som en socialförsäkringsfråga, medan deras motsvarigheter i USA snabbt banade väg för mer straffinriktade program.Abstract EnglishIn the post-war period, many Westernized countries advanced toward more rehabilitative and welfarist ideals informing crime policies. These ideals centered on the offending individual, not the victim. This was soon to change. Victim compensation programs were one of the first initiatives taken for victims of crime with the first established in the 1960s. This paper examines and compares the development of victim compensation programs in two countries with contrasting social welfare and penal policies, the United States and Sweden. Both countries developed victim compensation programs located within welfarist administrative institutions, suggesting common penal welfare frameworks and instruments. Using the comparative historical case study method, the study finds that formative victim compensation policies in the two countries differed widely, reflecting social welfare versus remedial welfare policies, and rehabilitative versus punitive carceral frameworks, respectively. Arguments upholding penal welfarist ideals and social insurance concerns underlay the early formation of Sweden’s victim compensation program and anchored subsequent developments while, in the United States, political conditions led to a rapid trajectory in more punitive directions.
Highlights
The victim rights movement, emerging in the United States in the mid-1970s and disseminating globally thereafter, has been recognized as a vehicle for the consolidation of pro-carceral sentiment and accompanying criminal legal policies (Elias, 1986; Gottschalk, 2006; Simon, 2007; Weed, 1998)
This paper examines and compares the development of victim compensation programs in two countries with contrasting social welfare and penal policies, the United States and Sweden
This article examines the emergence of victim compensation in two distinct national contexts, the United States and Sweden, both known for their “exceptional” welfare and crime policies, each representing extremes
Summary
The victim rights movement, emerging in the United States in the mid-1970s and disseminating globally thereafter, has been recognized as a vehicle for the consolidation of pro-carceral sentiment and accompanying criminal legal policies (Elias, 1986; Gottschalk, 2006; Simon, 2007; Weed, 1998). The first victim compensation policy that initiated in the United States in 1965 in the state of California landed within the Department of Social Welfare as opposed to an institution of crime control. Despite discussions for the implementation of national compensation policies, the enactment of such policies in the United States started at the state level They were initiated as crime related sentiments and policies shifted from penal welfarism to the punitive regime emerging in the 1960s and gaining rapid force in 1970s and decades to follow. In its original form, victims were eligible for compensation under the means-tested criterion already established by the Department of Social Welfare, that is, only married victims with dependent children could receive funds Those who were “unmarried, childless married couples, elderly people or individuals unable to pass a public welfare needs test” The bill underlined that, in some cases, the applicant may have reasonable grounds for not making a report, for example when the perpetrator and the injured party belonged to the same family (prop. 1977/78:126)
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