Dear Prime Minister

25th April 2006

RE: Compensation for Victims of Crime and Miscarriage of Justice

I am sure you would agree that not every country in the World can find the money for compensating victims of crime and errors in the judicial system. Hopefully, most would try to do so if they could. I hope we can find the money to do both. Recently some doubt has arisen that the Government does NOT intend to compensate both categories of victim fairly.

As a citizen of this country I believe that it is important to compensate our citizens and aliens as well for:
1. errors that are made in our courts
2. those who may be victims of crime.

Surely you must believe that the public would agree that we should pay compensation to victims of crime, that the state has been unable to prevent; and surely the public is even more likely to agree to compensate victims of that legislation, which although, designed to protect us, results in an error that the individual is accused of crimes they did not commit and is possibly imprisoned.

We only want money to be saved where our money is wasted! or where we really can’t afford it. If more money has to be spent to properly serve our citizens then the government should spend it, or reduce it, but fairly!

If this state imprisons an individual (ours or an alien) under suspicion and the state is unable to prosecute or does, and that individual is locked up and is subsequently found to be innocent of the charge then surely, that individual should be compensated?

If the British state imprisons an individual for a crime, for which it has not subsequently proved, that the individual is actually guilty, then surely we must compensate that individual for the time spent in prison. If we do NOT compensate that individual then we should be ashamed to speak of British justice and we run the risk of increasing the motivation of those that would attack our society, both internally and externally.

I don’t think that the compensation should be inflated. The compensation should be fairly assessed rather like money paid for citizens who are called up for jury service i.e.., taken away from their normal life.

Yours sincerely

A. Citizen

The Prime Minister has asked me to thank you for your recent letter, the contents of which will be carefully noted.