Look Who’s Paying for Crime : Growing Number of Public and Private Programs Require Criminals to Compensate Their Victims

While a Los Angeles equipment rental company was closed for the weekend in 1981, two employees unlocked the gate, backed a truck into the yard and stole a 40-foot boom lift.

They drove the lift to a contractor, who bought it for $12,000 and used it for two years before police intervened. Although a court convicted the thieves, original owner Ben Hinkle faced the loss of wear and tear on the $28,000 lift and the deprivation of potential rent of $1,000 a month between 1981 and 1983.

A Los Angeles Superior Court provided compensation for Hinkle, however, under a little-known state program that requires probationers to make restitution to victims.

One thief became a fugitive, but the other has paid more than $4,000 en route to satisfying his $15,000 obligation during his three-year probation. The checks started at $110 per month and increased to $125, $150 and $200 along with the thief’s ability to pay.

Hinkle’s windfall is largely the result of a beefing up of a decades-old probation restitution program.

Efforts Are Proliferating

Similar efforts to help the victims of crime continue to proliferate as the crime victims’ movement winds through its second decade. And the number and scope of services for victims is growing rapidly:

- In Batavia, N.Y., as part of a program that reconciles criminals and victims, a sniper meets face to face with the man he shot.

- In San Francisco, the Community United Against Violence helps gay men battered by their lovers, a group the legal system often fails to recognize.

- In Los Angeles, the Crime Victims Center organizes a bilingual, bicultural program to aid another often neglected group, Latinos.

- In San Diego, a psychologist develops a stress prevention program for police, cleanup crews, medical personnel, funeral directors and other participants in disasters.

Forty-four states, including California, provide financial assistance to victims. California requires probationers to make restitution to victims and, when that option is not feasible, pays individuals as much as $46,000 for physical or emotional damage. The money comes from a fund supported by fines against criminals.

A rising number of states also offer victims a voice in criminal justice proceedings. Forty-seven states, including California, allow victims to describe the effect of the crime upon them to sentencing judges, while 34 permit victims to express opinions at parole hearings.

Well-known organizations such as Victims for Victims, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Society’s League Against Molestation advise victims of these rights. They head a list of about 5,000 victims’ service groups nationally.

Further help is available in Los Angeles and 52 other California counties from the Victim-Witness Assistance Program, which intervenes in crises and helps victims understand the legal system and how to obtain state compensation.

Still, some experts fear that victims’ programs are inadequate.

“There are services that victims don’t qualify for,” said political science professor Robert Elias of Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “. . . The rules (for victims’ compensation programs) are extremely hard to satisfy.

”. . . It’s also not clear that victims are very useful to criminal justice personnel,” said Elias, author of a recent study, “The Politics of Victimization.” “Often victims are considered to be interferences. One main reason is that so many cases are plea bargained.”

Others worry that the movement has made little penetration in minority communities, particularly black neighborhoods and Indian reservations, where the crime rate is high.

“We in the victims’ movement have not done a good job of bringing our services to those communities,” said John Stein, deputy director of the National Organization for Victim’s Assistance.

The victims’ movement traces its origins to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when it was spurred by growing disaffection with perceived judicial leniency. A second major force was the women’s movement, with its breaking of the traditional silence surrounding rape and battering.

In Los Angeles County, one of the more recent effects of the movement was the reassigning of probationers who owed victims more than $10,000 to special case officers. The Probation Department also reduced the caseloads of the officers from 300 to 100, allowing them time to track down probationers who missed payments.

The officers may require probationers 90 days in arrears to appear before a judge, who can return them to jail. The officers can also demand more money for restitution when a probationer’s salary increases.

Additionally, a 1985 law enables the department to intercept probationers’ state tax refunds, and a more recent state law empowers the department to seek liens against a probationer’s property.

Making the Collections

Using these methods, the handful of officers assigned to larger cases have collected an average of $122,000 per month since the program started 18 months ago.

In the spring of 1986, the department intercepted tax refunds worth $750,000. This year, said Carol R. Koelle, director of central adult investigation for the County Probation Department, the department has sent almost 31,000 names to Sacramento of people paying fines and restitution and expects to collect much more money.

Among 80,000 probationers in the county, the program sends computerized monthly bills with return envelopes to 29,500 who are required to make restitution.

The program, called Big MAC (Maximum Account Caseload), was started by Mike Lindsay, director of the Foothill Area Office of the Los Angeles County Probation Department.

A 26-year Probation Department employee, Lindsay worked at a department store in his first management job out of college and said he learned that people skilled in other areas were not necessarily good bill collectors. He chose probation officers for Big MAC who were good at collections.

“I thought that there was no way we were going to do the kind of job we should as far as collecting money, which is a whole new world for probation officers,” he said.

“Many are social workers whose whole training was helping people get back on their feet. The idea of getting them to pay bills was uncommon and hard for many.

”. . . We were dealing with many cases of white-collar crime--sophisticated people who often have attorneys and often figure out ways not to make payments. Sometimes they have political connections and you will get a call from someone.”

Number of Offices Grows

The program started in four offices and expanded to nine. A Little MAC program for juvenile offenders operates in six locations.

The probationer’s debt is based on claims of losses submitted by the victim and verified by the probation officer, Lindsay said. Claims of inconvenience or emotional distress are not allowed. Indigent probationers who cannot afford to pay may be required to perform community service.

“Some (probationers) are extremely remorseful,” Lindsay said. “If a man drives a car drunk and kills his date, his whole life can change. He’s very eager to help the family. It takes years of therapy to get back on his feet.”

In his large office at his equipment firm, Hinkle said he thought he got only partial value for his stolen lift but called the Big MAC program excellent.

“The Probation Department on their own action stepped up the monthly payments,” he said.

”. . . It’s a rarity . . . that something is stolen and the person pays it back. . . . It takes follow up to have the restitution be workable.”

Other victims agree. Valentin Benavidez of Baldwin Park lost his produce business after a Los Angeles wholesaler defrauded him of more than $100,000 and he could not pay his bills.

Benavidez and his wife once employed 200 people to clean, fumigate and irrigate crops at a 600-acre farm in Los Mochis, Mexico. Now he is recovering from an ulcer and a liver infection at the small home he shares with his wife, Rafaela, and four children. Rafaela Benavidez works as a bookkeeper to make ends meet.

Benavidez, 37, said he made frequent $15,000 produce shipments to the wholesaler, who at first paid in cash but then asked to pay once a week. When checks began to bounce, Benavidez flew in from his office in Nogales, Ariz., to investigate.

The wholesaler appeared to place calls to a market chain and to his bank to verify that money was forthcoming, Benavidez said.

But when he was put on trial, the wholesaler admitted that the calls he made actually were to his wife.

A court placed the man and his wife on three years’ probation and required them to make restitution of $50,000 each. The Benavidezes will soon begin receiving monthly payments of $350.

Getting the Papers Signed

Benavidez failed to fill out paper work to get restitution, but Venita J. Strange, deputy probation officer for the Foothill Area Office, persisted for more than a year to get the papers signed.

“It was very good of her doing what she did,” Benavidez said. “. . . I think she’s really gone to bat for us.”

Elsewhere, one of the most unusual of the new programs provides face-to-face reconciliation between victim and offender.

On a spring day in 1984, a sniper with a high-powered rifle fired three shots from a second-story window in Batavia, N.Y., hitting a pedestrian below the heart and another in the kidney.

More than a year later, the assailant met his recovered victims in a church anteroom only a few feet from the scene of the crime. After all three expressed their rage and confusion, one victim stuck out his hand to the assailant.

“I’ll never forget,” he said, “but I’m willing to believe that you didn’t mean it.”

With the help of recommendations for leniency from the victims, the assailant received a sentence that included six months in jail, 4 1/2 years’ probation and mandatory drug and alcohol counseling.

“There’s a myth that all victims want to put offenders away for the longest time or hang them from the highest tree,” said Dennis J. Wittman, coordinator of community service and victims’ assistance programs for the Genesee County, N.Y., Sheriff’s Department.

“If victims are attended to intensively and if we address their healing and their suffering . . . and give them standing in the justice system, you will see victims restored and looking at better ways to do justice.”

The reconciliation program was devised by Prisoners in Community Together in Michigan City, Ind., which has trained counselors to carry it out in 65 locations nationally.

“It’s primarily an emotional reconciliation where the victim has the opportunity to ask the offender questions that have been pressing,” said PACT Executive Director Rufus Thomas.

“Had the offender been watching them? What led him to choose them? Many times there is a personal blaming involving themselves” that they want to get rid of.

Victims’ Emotions

Similarly, Michael R. Mantell, chief psychologist of the San Diego Police Department, also considered victims’ emotions when he developed a treatment for many survivors at the July, 1984, San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre.

Mantell felt that many participants there and at shootings in the Edmond, Okla., post office in August, 1986, and at the Palm Bay, Fla., shopping center in April became “vicarious victims.” He trained counselors to reduce stress for whole groups of people at those locations.

“In Edmond the entire work force at the post office was like family that had been victimized,” said John Stein, deputy director of NOVA who organized the training.

“After the train crash in Baltimore (in January), it was all the passengers. It was the neighbors along the tracks. In Palm Bay, it was the estimated 1,000 shoppers who were at that center, the store employees and the neighbors.”

Mantell recalled putting his arm around a young police officer in the parking lot outside the San Ysidro McDonald’s after the shooting.

“I can’t look anymore,” the officer said. “Those are real people in there. Kids are not supposed to be dead in a McDonald’s.

“The worst part of it is that the little boy over there laying on his side is wearing the same shirt as my kid did when I left this morning.

Said Mantell: “. . . What is newsworthy is that people come out in a positive way. . . . What this incident did for him was make him re-evaluate his relationship with his family. Over four to five months he came into family counseling and recognized how important it was for him to spend more time with his kids and his wife. It opened him up and put life into a healthier perspective.

“Here is a message of hope for victims: Being victimized doesn’t necessarily leave you helpless or hopeless. With proper counseling and help from friends and loved ones, you can come through it.”