Citation

Kunst MJJ, Schiltkamp SAC. Psychiatry Psychol. Law. 2020; 27(1): 26-43.

Affiliation

Faculty of Law, Institute for Criminal Law & Criminology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13218719.2019.1664278

PMID

32284778

PMCID

PMC7144196

Abstract

In the Netherlands, as in many other Western countries, state compensation for violent crime victimization is only to be granted if the applicant provides a plausible victimization story and did not contribute to the crime. However, due to the discretion left to those who decide upon requests for state compensation, decisions about state compensation may be subject to the influence of legally irrelevant factors. This study investigated the potential influence of one such legally irrelevant factor: feelings of sympathy for the applicant. Forty-seven lawyers who work for the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund (VOCF) were presented five vignettes about a fictitious act of violent crime and asked to rate their feelings of sympathy for the victims and to indicate how they would decide about the victims' requests for state compensation.

RESULTS indicate that feelings of sympathy may indeed play a role in the decision-making process.

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Language: en

Keywords

compensation; crime; decisions; sympathy; victimization; violence