Those funding streams can fluctuate greatly. But many states have put the onus of paying for the programs on people in the criminal justice system – court fines, taking a percentage of prisoner wages or prison commissary fees. Only a dozen states offer enough to cover that median cost.Ībout a dozen states get most or all of their funding from recurring state budget dollars. The National Funeral Directors Association estimated the median cost of a funeral with burial vault was more than $9,400 in 2021.

But many states don’t offer enough money to cover the actual cost of burying a loved one. Programs have lagged less in raising limits on individual expenses like funerals. Some of those amounts haven’t been increased since the 1970s. The Associated Press found that the maximum awards states provide ranged from $10,000 to $190,000, though two states did not have overall caps on awards. If a family member or friend starts a GoFundMe drive, it could cause some programs to reduce an award or claw back already granted money. Programs also require victims to exhaust other payment options first, like insurance, lawsuit awards or even crowdfunding. About a dozen states don’t offer emergency awards at all. And many states offer emergency awards to help victims through the immediate aftermath of crime, but advocates say those awards are restrictive, capped as low as $500, and are deducted from any later award. Some programs offer to directly pay funeral homes or medical providers. … Those funds take months to arrive to families,” said Aswad Thomas, vice president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit working to reform victim compensation and other aspects of the criminal justice system. “So many families often can’t rely solely on that reimbursement model. She was met with administrative hurdles, a denial that blamed her son for his own death, a lengthy appeal - all while paying up front through a personal loan that gathered interest as she waited. Pamela White turned to Louisiana’s victim compensation board for help when her son, Dararius Evans, was killed in a shooting a few days after Christmas in 2019.

The programs also struggle under often unstable funding mechanisms that leave their budgets vulnerable to shortages and the changing priorities of lawmakers, especially those that rely on court fees and fines as their main source or only source of funding. Many programs require victims to pay for those expenses first and exhaust all means of payment before they reimburse costs, often at rates that don’t fully cover expenses. Thousands of crime victims each year are confronted with the difficult financial reality of state compensation programs that are billed as safety nets to offset costs like funerals, medical care, relocation and other needs.

By MIKE CATALINI and CLAUDIA LAUER (Associated Press)

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