Victims' Compensation and Restorative Justice

Continuing yesterday's post, the two other victim-related bills that Renny Cushing sponsored during this session and that are now on their way to the New Hampshire Governor (having passed in the House and the Senate), are:

A bill that expands the categories of those who are eligible to file victims' compensation claims. Specifically, the bill amends the existing victims' compensation law to include "a family member of a law enforcement officer, an inmate at a state or county correctional facility, and an individual who is not a citizen of the United States or who is not a legal alien."

Regarding the types of claims that may be made, the new additions are in bold:

The claimant may be reimbursed for reasonable out-of-pocket expenses, medical expenses, funeral expenses, counseling expenses, rehabilitative expenses, expenses associated with the victim’s participation in post-conviction proceedings and victim-offender dialogue programs or other restorative justice programs, and lost wages directly resulting from the crime.

And speaking of restorative justice programs, that's the other bill that Renny sponsored: "An act relative to access to restorative justice programs by victims of crime." That bill, in summary, "adds the right to access to restorative justice programs including victim-initiated victim-offender dialogue programs offered through the department of corrections to the victim bill of rights and requires the office of victim/witness assistance to provide information on such programs."

These bills, together with the Crime Victims Equality Act (see yesterday's post), offer activists in other states some powerful examples of progressive victims' rights and criminal justice legislation. Alongside the death penalty repeal bill that got some good attention in New Hampshire this session and the death penalty study commission bill that just passed, they present a vision (and now also a reality!) of the possibilities within anti-death penalty and pro-victim lawmaking.