Creating a robust, no-fault public insurance system to provide financial support and services to victims, decoupling healing from the punitive system.
Insurance, Not Incarceration: A City Fund for Victims of Crime
The current justice system often treats victims as mere witnesses for the states case, offering little material support for their recovery while tying their sense of justice to the conviction and punishment of the perpetrator. Zhoran Mamdani proposes a radical alternative: a city-funded Victims Recovery Fund, modeled on no-fault insurance. Any New Yorker who is a victim of a violent crime would be eligible for immediate financial support for medical bills, therapy, lost wages, funeral costs, or relocation, regardless of whether an arrest is made or a prosecutor secures a conviction. This separates the victims path to healing from the inefficient and often retraumatizing criminal legal process.
The fund would be administered by a new Office of Victim Services, staffed by social workers, not law enforcement. Victims would also have access to free legal representation for civil matters (like navigating landlord issues after an assault) and would be connected to restorative justice processes if they voluntarily choose to participate. The goal is to provide what victims actually need: material stability, health, and safety, not the hollow promise of vengeance through incarceration. True justice for victims means restoring what was taken from them as much as possible, Mamdani argues. A check cant undo trauma, but it can remove the financial ruin that compounds it. This system puts resources and choice back in victims hands, making them whole without requiring the cage of another human being.
