Criminal Compensation
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority was set up by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1964 on the classically Rousseauian bourgeois principle that the state is there to protect people from harm and if it fails to do so it should pay them money. Despite this and “award-capping” by the Tories in the 90s, not to mention gross inefficiency, it provides a lifeline to people hurt and disabled by crime. Now the government is proposing to overhaul the scheme. According to Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart, the idea is to “create a structure to help people to survive and not spend the...