The author concludes that although there has been a clear increase in attention to formal legal provisions dealing with victims, there remains a sizeable gulf between those provisions and the commitment to compensating crime victims in practice. The process of establishing and enforcing the victim's restitution claims has not yet been well integrated into the more traditional process of convicting and punishing offenders. Where gaps between the two processes exist, they are cracks in the system into which the interests of crime victims continue to fall and be forgotten. The article concludes with a proposal to create an International Research and Policy Committee on Restitution to Crime Victims to identify and resolve questions of theory, policy and practice that impede our ability to rescind a resolution at the International Congresses that 'modern law does not sufficiently consider the reparation due to injured parties.' (Author abstract)