Should the compensation be different according to the victim’s finances? For example if a child of a billionaire is molested a compensation of 50k would not be compensation at all. However if a child of a poor homeless person was molested, even 5k would be a huge compensation.
Now what about the criminal? Surely it is unfair to demand a compensation of 1 million from a criminal who makes only 10k a year. It means he will have to serve his whole life working to gather the money needed for the compensation. On the other hand it doesn’t make sense to request a billionaire to compensate with 10k because that would allow the billionaire to continue his crimes almost indefinitely.
I assume you’re asking us to speculate about the case where there is free entry into the production of arbitration services and the absence of a publicly-subsidized prosecutor (free market in law). In such a society, the compensation will be determined in each specific case by the parties involved. It is possible that sufficiently grave crimes, such as child molestation/rape, would simply result in outlaw as Nielsio has suggested (abrogation of all property rights, including the right to property in one’s own body, that is, life). Otherwise, I would imagine a “compensation schedule” would emerge whereby it is customary to pay $X for this offense, $Y for this more serious offense and so on. Depending on the level of offense, the parties typically settle for the customary restitution. In outline form, this is how restitution generally operated in customary law societies.
I agree with Clayton on how it might emerge, especially since we cannot predict precisely what would happen in an entirely free market society. But in regards to the wealth of the criminals in particular - it may be possible that for certain crimes people may find that a percentage of the criminals wealth should be paid in compensation. Since you specified child molestation/rape, it may be possible that instead of outlawing the criminal, they may be required to pay 50% of their wealth in restitution to the victim. That would mean that no matter how wealthy the criminal, the criminal would be hit hard. However, that may present other problems, such as poorer criminals not having to pay the victims very much money. That and I don’t think this method would be accurate in terms of rights be violated.
But I think Clayton is right, knowing precisely how much criminals would have to pay in restitution is impossible to know, but I think if I could come up with that in less than one minute, professional arbitrators who would be dedicating their life to studying justice would probably have better answers (especially since the bad ones would be weeded out).
In principle it is possible to undo a rape, but we lack the tools to do so. There can be no applied theory of just compensation. Tort really seems more about practicality than justice.
Its useful to keep in mind that compensation is not really compensation, but just a ‘bribe’ to keep the victim form retaliating. So, the same amount won’t do it fore everyone, but that’ the risk the criminal is taking when aggressing against a rich guy.
Practically, it will depend on the insurance premium you’re willing to pay: the higher the premium, the higher the compensation that will be offered to the victim, and the better the chances of you being forgiven. If you’re paying it out of your own pocket, than you’ll pay whatever you can as long as you fear retaliation more than loosing wealth. So, I suspect that insurance compensation would vary by policy cover, while out-of-pocket compensations would vary by the victim’s wealth.
I doubt wealth would ever directly factor into deciding restitution because, in a private law society, financial privacy would be essentially absolute… it would be impossible to reliably figure how much wealth a person has.