Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services lacks the necessary funds to make payments owed to victims of crime in the state, resulting in a $2.6 million backlog as of June 2011, a new state audit shows.
The audit also found that many of the payments victims did receive did not have the documentation required by state law to prove that the victims deserved the funds, and that a lack of administrative oversight by the department made receiving excessive or unauthorized payments all too easy.
The department’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board awards payments to innocent victims of crime or to their families when the victim died or was physically or psychologically injured as a direct result of the crime, as long as the victim or the family had a minimum of $100 in unreimbursed expenses or lost at least two continuous weeks of income. In fiscal 2011, about 1,000 claims were approved, totaling $5.2 million, said Rick Binetti, spokesman for the department.
At the end of fiscal 2011, the CICB’s compensation fund had a balance of $177,726 but a backlog of 382 awards, valued at $2.6 million, the audit says.
At the end of the current fiscal year, the department likely will owe more than $6 million, estimated Russell Butler, executive director of the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, which advocates on behalf of victims.
But several failures by the CICB also made inappropriate claims easy to obtain.
The agency failed to get the appropriate documentation for at least a number of those payments it did make. Of the 20 award payments sampled, documents were missing for payments valued at $82,377, according to the audit.
For example, one victim received $25,000 for a permanent loss of part of the vision in one eye, the result of an assault. However, no doctor or other medical professional was documented as substantiating this claim, which is required by law.
Because the department does not require victims to give their Social Security numbers, they also could be receiving more money than they are entitled to, the audit says.
If a victim receives disability payments because of a crime that occurred at work, the payments are supposed to be subtracted from the compensation received by the CICB, said Bruce Meyers, Maryland’s chief auditor. But without the victim’s Social Security number, the payments are difficult to track.
“It’s just the honor system,” Meyers said.
Unauthorized claims could be obtained because seven employees had access to databases that they should not have, the audit says, though no such claims were found.
In written responses to the findings, department Deputy Secretary Lawrence Franklin said all the lapses have been addressed.
