THE LAW REFORM Commission has called for a new compensation scheme for victims of violent crime that would broaden the definition of violence to include victims of harassment, stalking and domestic violence offences.

The Commission is an independent statutory body that makes recommendations for law reform.

It has today published a new report titled ‘Compensating Victims of Crime’.

Since 1974, the State has been compensating victims of crime under an administrative scheme.

However, the Commission has called “for a completely new compensation structure which is victim-centred and takes a rights-based approach to compensating victims for the suffering they have endured as a result of violent crimes”.

The Commission said the scheme should provide “fair, appropriate, and timely compensation” and be established “without delay”.

It also said the compensation should be paid “without waiting for the outcome of any criminal or civil proceedings”.

A victim of a crime of violence is someone who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm or distress, as a direct result of that crime.

The report adds that the scheme should “adopt a sufficiently broad definition of ‘harm’ so that the harms associated with both physical and non-physical violence are captured”.

While “obviously violent” offences like murder and assault would be included, so too would other offences such as harassment and stalking, intimate image abuse offences, and domestic violence offences.

“The definition of harm should clearly encompass non-physical impacts arising from particular offences such as sexual offences and domestic violence, including mental or emotional harm or distress as a result of a crime,” said the Commission.

“In the past, violence has typically been defined in narrow terms, focusing on physical harm or threats,” said the report.

“This narrow conception of violence fails to recognise that some crimes result primarily in harm by way of traumatising impact rather than physical harm.”

The Commission has recommended that the scheme should provide for “reasonable, verifiable expenses”, such as loss of earnings, without a minimum or maximum threshold.

It has also recommended payment of general compensation for pain and suffering with minimum and maximum thresholds, with a band scheme used to reflect the impact of the crime.

The Commission adds that decisions should be made “as quickly as possible” and interim compensation payments should be made in appropriate cases, for example, where the final payment cannot be determined quickly and an applicant requires urgent financial assistance.

The Commission also noted that it is “central to this recommendation that the statutory body is funded from predictable and sufficient government funds”.

“This is not currently the case and evidence suggests that the limited funds available to the current scheme have led to delays in the past for payments to victims of crime.”

The report added that information on the new scheme “should be provided in an accessible form” and that the application procedure should allow applicants to track the progress of their application.

The Commission recommended a new application time limit of two years from the date of the crime, with some exceptions.

It also recommends that, in general, the crime must be reported to Gardaí and applicants must cooperate with the investigating and prosecuting authorities, unless there are good reasons why this wasn’t possible.

The Commission also recommended that a person be eligible for compensation if they suffer harm in other circumstances that may warrant state-funded compensation, such as saving a life, or when coming to the assistance of a member of An Garda Síochána who is under attack.

Elsewhere, the Commission noted that the law already allows the courts to order convicted persons to pay compensation to victims.

However, it warns that this provision “is not frequently used for a variety of reasons” and notes that not every accused person will be in a position to pay compensation.

“Nonetheless, where a convicted person in an appropriate case has means, the Commission believes they should pay compensation to their victims and it has made recommendations to increase the use of the existing provisions.”