Today, OVC is one of five bureaus within OJP and works closely with these other components -- the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) -- to support programs that benefit crime victims. OVC serves as the federal government's chief advocate for crime victims and collaborates with many DOJ components, other federal agencies, as well as public and private organizations, to improve services to crime victims.

This report assesses the impact of the Fund and describes the accomplishments of the Office for Victims of Crime from October 1, 1992 through September 30, 1994 (Fiscal Years (FY) 1993 and 1994)² in response to the requirements of Section 1407(g) of VOCA, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 10604(g). That section specifies that "the [OVC] Director shall ... every two years ... report to the President and to the Congress" on the effectiveness of operations under VOCA.

In passing VOCA, Congress recognized the federal government's responsibility to provide leadership in offering needed services to crime victims. It created two ways to offer support: 1) formula grants, which are provided to the states and territories for state crime victim compensation and victim assistance programs; and 2) discretionary grants, which are awarded to states, localities, and non-profit organizations to support services to victims of federal crime, pioneering programs for crime victims, quality training and technical assistance to criminal justice and other allied professionals, and the dissemination of information to the victims' field.

The following are some of the most significant accomplishments that have resulted from the implementation of VOCA in Fiscal Years 1992-94.

• Between FY 1992 and 1994, $479.8 million from federal criminal offenders was made available to serve crime victims. Although a total of $551.4 million dollars was deposited into the Crime Victims Fund, a statutory ceiling limited the amount of Fund monies that could be utilized for crime victims programs. The elimination of that ceiling in 1993 indicated the increasing commitment of Congress to serve crime victims and support systemic change on their behalf.

• During Fiscal Years 1992-1994, OVC awarded $196.8 million in VOCA Victim Assistance grants to the states. These grants helped to provide services for almost 2 million victims each year and supported approximately 2,300 local victim service agencies across the nation, including rape crisis centers, shelters for battered women, and children's advocacy centers. Total victim assistance grants to states almost doubled between FY 1986 and 1994.

• During Fiscal Years 1992-1994, OVC awarded $185.4 million in VOCA Victim Compensation grants to the states. Victim compensation payments cover out-of-pocket expenses such as medical bills, mental health counseling, funeral costs, and lost wages. The total FY 1994 federal payout to participating states increased 174 percent from $23.6 million in FY 1986 to $64.7 million in FY 1994.³
3 In FY 1986, 39 states and territories had compensation programs eligible to participate and receive VOCA compensation grants. By FY 94, a total of 50 states and territories received VOCA compensation grants. The State of Maine received its first VOCA victim compensation grant in FY 1995. Although the Nevada operates a victim compensation program, it has chosen not to make compensation available to non-residents. As a result, Nevada is not eligible to participate in the VOCA crime victim compensation program.
VOCA funds supported pioneering partnerships between all levels of government and many different agencies to improve services to crime victims. These interagency projects included children's advocacy centers, victim services centers, and interdisciplinary violence against women programs designed to reduce the number of victim interviews, provide settings especially designed for victims, and increase collaboration between criminal justice and victim service agencies.
Using only about one percent of the total Crime Victims Fund, OVC established training and technical assistance programs that reached several hundred thousand diverse professionals who serve crime victims.

• Domestic Violence Law Enforcement Training: OVC administered 23 projects that trained more than 100,000 law enforcement officers from 25 states on domestic violence policies and response procedures.
• Crime Victims and Corrections Training: In the field of corrections, OVC supported two large, nationwide training and technical assistance projects which provided training to 35 states, Department of Defense corrections officials, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, resulting in new policies, procedures, and cooperative liaisons that had never existed between corrections agencies and victim service providers.
• Community Crisis Response: Through the Immediate Response to Emerging Problems (IREP) initiative, OVC provided emergency training and technical assistance to communities within 48 hours of large scale crime victimizations -- a program subsequently used in the aftermath of the Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.
• National Bias Crimes Training for Law Enforcement and Victim Assistance Professionals: OVC funded the development of a curriculum to train law enforcement professionals about hate and bias crimes. More than 1,000 copies of the curriculum have been distributed in at least 28 states and territories.
• Civil Justice for Crime Victims: OVC funded a bulletin for victims and service providers, as well as training materials and training at regional conferences for victim service providers, on how to assist crime victims in understanding their civil legal rights and remedies against perpetrators and third parties.
• Victim Assistance Academy: To help professionalize the field, OVC funded a project to provide one week, 40 hour intensive training on victimology and victim services for victim advocates around the country. The comprehensive curriculum developed by the Academy will be made available to states to assist in their training programs.
• Elder Abuse Training: Through a grant to the Police Executive Research Forum, an extensive law enforcement curriculum on elder abuse was developed to help train police department across the country regarding how to respond to older Americans who have been victimized by crime.
• VOCA State Administrator Training: OVC sponsored the first joint training and technical assistance conference for both VOCA victim compensation and victim assistance state administrators in 1992.

3 In FY 1986, 39 states and territories had compensation programs eligible to participate and receive VOCA compensation grants. By FY 94, a total of 50 states and territories received VOCA compensation grants. The State of Maine received its first VOCA victim compensation grant in FY 1995. Although the Nevada operates a victim compensation program, it has chosen not to make compensation available to non-residents. As a result, Nevada is not eligible to participate in the VOCA crime victim compensation program.

• Victim Assistance Training for the Clergy: In the wake of crime, victims commonly seek assistance from clergy, many of whom are not trained about how to respond effectively to the needs of these victims. Through the development of curricula and training sessions, OVC helped train clergy, as well as police and hospital chaplains, in victim services and death notification procedures.
• Training on Grieving and Bereaved Children: Through a FY 1994 grant, OVC supported the development of a videotape series for use by victim service providers, including school counselors and youth program personnel, when responding to grieving children who have survived or witnessed homicide or other violent crimes, including domestic and spousal abuse.
• Training Regarding the Media: Through a FY 1994 grant, OVC also supported the development of resource materials to provide effective strategies for encouraging sensitive media reporting involving victims and survivors of violent crime.
• Multidisciplinary Training: OVC also funded many multidisciplinary training efforts for state and local jurisdictions and diverse professionals who interact with crime victims, including personnel from the criminal justice, medical, mental health, social services, clergy, and other fields.
• VOCA funds supported innovative programs that improved services to federal crime victims and promoted systemic change. These included:

• First Comprehensive Victim-Witness Training for Military Personnel: Over 600 military personnel from more than 250 military installations attended training sessions on victim-witness issues. For the first time, standardized victim assistance training was also offered to personnel from military correctional facilities. As a result of these and other OVC efforts, the Department of Defense adopted a regulation that requires all military inmates to complete an impact of crime on victims curriculum prior to release from any military correctional facility. It is the only correctional program in the nation to have such a requirement.
• Training for 70 Different Federal Law Enforcement Agencies: Training programs at the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) provided victim-witness assistance training each year to more than 5,000 federal law enforcement officers from dozens of federal agencies.
• Training for Federal Victim-Witness Coordinators and United States Attorneys: In FY 1994, OVC and FLETC co~sponsored the first joint training of Victim-Witness Coordinators from U.S. Attorney's offices and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In addition, OVC provided funding for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) to send federal prosecutors to OVC-sponsored training conferences.
• Victim-Witness Training for the FBI: OVC provided funds to the FBI for specialized training for all field office victim-witness coordinators, brochures for crime victims, and training materials for the FBI's training academy at Quantico, Virginia.
• Under the innovative Victim Assistance in Indian Country (VAIC) and Children's Justice Act (CJA} programs, VOCA provided more than $5.4 million for services to Native Americans in 19 states. As a result of VAIC, more than 52 Native American victim assistance programs have been established. Through the administration of the Children's Justice Act for Native Americans (CJA) program, OVC has assisted tribal and state criminal justice systems to handle child sexual and physical abuse cases with increased coordination and collaboration between agencies.
• More than four-fifths of the states have adopted the Federal Crime Victims Fund framework as a model funding vehicle for victim compensation rather than relying exclusively on state revenue appropriations. States increasingly are receiving the bulk of their victim compensation funding from criminal fines and penalty assessments levied against state offenders. Although four-fifths of the states receive most but not all of their compensation funding from criminal fines and penalties, nearly three~quarters of all state compensation programs are funded exclusively in this way. Thus, for a large majority of states, no tax dollars are involved either in the administration of the compensation programs or in the award of benefits to victims.
• Dissemination of products such as videotapes, manuals, and brochures from VOCA-funded grant projects has enhanced the availability of crucial information to the crime victims field. The OVC Resource Center in Rockville, Maryland, one of the nation's foremost resources of victim-related information, statistics, and materials, disseminates most of this information and responds to thousands of requests for information about victims' issues each year.
• Between 1992 and 1994, OVC responded to hundreds of requests from crime victims and referred them to appropriate service providers for assistance. OVC receives and answers hundreds of letters each year from crime victims across the country. Many of these letters are directed to the White House or the Attorney General, who often turn to OVC for help in responding to the letter writers' needs. OVC staff members answer each letter individually, make phone calls on behalf of victims as each case warrants, and refer them to appropriate assistance at the state and local levels.
• OVC has served as the federal government's leading advocate for crime victims by highlighting the concerns of crime victims at the federal level and by responding to emerging issues in the victims field. Each year, OVC initiates National Crime Victims Rights Week, which culminates in a ceremony at the White House, to recognize the contribution of crime victims and victim advocates in securing rights and services for victims. OVC also makes recommendations for programmatic and legislative reforms, such as those set forth in Chapter 6.
• The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 expanded victims' rights and strengthened VOCA. In 1994, Congress passed comprehensive crime legislation, known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Crime Act). The law provides significant funding to enhance policing and prevention programs, makes three strikes and you're out" the law of the land, and expands the rights of crime victims. For example, it provides the right of allocution to violent crime victims, extending them the right to speak to Federal courts before the imposition of a sentence. The Crime Act also provides mandatory restitution for certain crime victims, including victims of violence and telemarketing fraud. It provides protections for battered women who move across state lines by requiring each state court system to give full faith and credit to protection orders issued in the courts of other states. The Crime Act also enacted "troth in sentencing" provisions, sentence enhancements, and sex offender registries that enable victims, survivors, and communities to take steps to protect themselves when an offender is released.

In recent years, enormous strides have been made in the victims' field through the efforts of the Office for Victims of Crime and many national and local victims organizations and service providers, such as Mothers Against Drank Driving, the National Association of Crime Victim Compensation Boards, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the National Organization for Victim Assistance, the National Victim Center, Parents of Murdered Children and Other Survivors of Homicide Victims, the Victims' Assistance Legal Organization, the Victim Service Agency, and many others.

But in no small measure, reforms that benefit crime victims are due to victims themselves, who have provided much of the leadership and vision for needed change. For example, Candy Lightner, whose daughter Cari was killed when she was 13 years old by a repeat offender, was a founder of Mothers Against Drank Driving (MADD), which has helped reduce alcohol-related fatalities by 31% in the last 10 years. John Walsh, whose 6-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and killed, helped to establish the Center for Missing and Exploited Children which has assisted the recovery of close to 30,000 children since 1984. The activism of Connie and Howard Clery, whose daughter Jeanne Ann was murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University, led to the enactment of the federal Campus Security Act that requires colleges to publish their crime statistics.

While much has been accomplished to address the needs of crime victims during the past decade, a great deal remains to be done to ensure justice and healing for all victims. This report concludes with recommendations for legislative and other reforms that, if enacted, would further improve victims' rights and services. OVC has also established a number of goals for FY 1996 which are set forth in Appendix A, and some of which are included below. These goals were developed in consultation with national, state, and local organizations, victim advocates and practitioners, and crime victims themselves, with whom we work closely.

• National Crime Victims Agenda: One of OVC's primary goals for 1996 is to develop a National Crime Victims Agenda that will provide a guide for long-term action and set forth future training and technical assistance needs in the victims field. In 1982, a Presidential Task Force on Victims of Crime was created to study how crime victims were treated by the criminal justice system. It found that the system was severely imbalanced -- focusing almost entirely on the criminal, while ignoring the rights and needs of victims. In its Final Report, the Task Force issued a comprehensive blueprint of 68 recommendations designed to improve the treatment of crime victims by the criminal justice system and other sectors of society.

OVC's National Crime Victims Agenda will update the 1982 Report. It will describe the progress made in victim services during the past 14 years and set forth a plan for the future, including promising practices, legislative reforms, and new national-scope training and technical assistance programs. It is anticipated that this document will serve as a guide for comprehensive victim services well into the next century.

• Promising Practices: OVC also is committed to develop and disseminate promising practices for all who provide services for crime victims. Through discretionary grant funding, OVC is in the process of identifying promising practices in serving crime victims in the fields of law enforcement, evidentiary medical examinations, prosecution, probation and parole, corrections, the judiciary, applied technologies, and in other areas. Once completed, this body of information on the most promising strategies to serve crime victims will be published and disseminated across the country to encourage replication.
• National Victim Assistance Academy and Professionalization of the Field: In 1995, OVC launched the National Victim Assistance Academy, the first national academy to provide quality training on victims issues for victim advocates. In its first year, the Academy developed a comprehensive week-long curriculum and trained 33 advocates, as well as about a dozen criminal justice students who participated via satellite from California State University - Fresno.

Increased professionalization among victim service providers remains a top priority for OVC. In FY 1996, OVC will expand its National Victim Assistance Academy by providing comprehensive training for 120 advocates at three different sites simultaneously as part of its continuing Intensive Professional Seminar. In addition, the Academy curriculum will be made available to states to assist in their training programs. The Academy also will support a train-the-trainer seminar series to increase the number of qualified trainers to address hate/bias crime, eider abuse, victim assistance in community corrections, responding to staff victimization in correctional agencies, and death notification.

• Training to Improve Victim Services: OVC intends to enhance services to state, local, and tribal communities by expanding its support of local crisis response training to assist communities in the wake of catastrophic crimes like the Oklahoma City bombing; establishing more mentoring programs that permit teams from one community to visit sites that have implemented multidisciplinary approaches to handling such crimes as domestic violence and child abuse; and establishing training sites at demonstration programs that provide services to all crime victims in settings especially designed to meet their needs.
• Training to Improve Services to Federal Crime Victims: OVC will increase victim-witness training programs for Indian Nations and federal agencies, including the FBI, United States Attorneys' offices, and the Department of Defense, to enhance services to federal crime victims. In addition, OVC will fund full-time victim-witness trainers at the FBI Academy and the Office of Legal Education, as well as continue funding a trainer at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center; support the development of an automated case tracking/victim notification system for U.S. Attorneys; provide victim-witness training for tribal and federal judges; and establish demonstration projects in U.S. Attorneys' offices to enhance services to victims of

bank robberies and white collar crime, including telemarketing fraud. Cultural sensitivity training also will be supported to improve services to Native American crime victims and others.

• Other Innovative Projects: Current OVC projects will soon produce the following comprehensive products in a variety of important fields: a curriculum that may be used by schools across the country to teach children about prevention strategies, victimization, and available services; a report regarding the most comprehensive curricula used at graduate schools and colleges to train different professionals, including doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers, law enforcement, and mental health professionals, about crime victims' issues; a film that describes the most promising practices used by doctors and nurse practitioners in providing services to sexually abused children; and a report that describes many ways in which technology is being used to protect and benefit crime victims.
• Cutting Red Tape: OVC has embarked on an effort to improve its grants process by cutting burdensome requirements from its formula grants program, computerizing the state formula grant reporting system, and awarding these grants earlier in the fiscal year.

Finally, like the nation, OVC focused a great deal of attention on the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In many ways, this tragedy exemplified all that the victims' field represents -- services at a time of crisis, survivorship at a time of senseless destruction, and lessons learned leading to improved services in the future. A special memorial issue of Oklahoma Today entitled "The Historical Record of the Oklahoma City Bombing" stated:

".... beginning in the very seconds that./followed the explosion, aye, before the black clouds rose above the downtown tree line, Oklahomans exhibited the acts e~f heroism, devotion, and hope that - when brought together - have always moved our nation forward. More hopeful yet, this response was mirrored by that of our fellow countrymen, suggesting that this same heroism, devotion, and hope remain lodged in the hearts of innumerable Americans."

The services offered to victims in the Oklahoma City bombing case in many ways demonstrated the range of services that OVC provides ~ crisis response to communities; technical assistance to federal law enforcement and prosecutors; assistance for victims in obtaining needed services; coordination between victim assistance agencies; and funds to help victims participate in criminal justice proceedings.

• Crisis Response: OVC provided emergency funding for three crisis response teams, sending a total of 43 trained crisis responders organized by the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), to assist in debriefing surviving family members, children, and teachers at schools, as well as emergency rescue and medical personnel and clergy.
• Community and School Crisis Response Training: Due to the success of the school-based crisis response team, the Department of Education and OVC, along with the Department of Health and Human Services, awarded a cooperative agreement to NOVA to help school districts around the nation develop a crisis response capacity to respond to major crises that affect students within the school community.
• Technical Assistance to United States Attorney's Office: OVC staff worked in Oklahoma City to assist the United States Attorney's Office in developing brochures about victims' rights and available services.
• Crisis Response Coordination: OVC has worked with the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Executive Office for United States Attorneys to develop strategies for increased mutual cooperation and information- sharing during any future large scale crime.
• Assistance During Criminal Justice Proceedings: OVC provided funds for an audio link during the venue hearing in Oklahoma City to allow victims who could not fit in the courtroom to hear the proceedings in another room. OVC also committed $200,000 to assist victims to attend the proceedings in Denver. Staff continue to coordinate assistance efforts with many private sector organizations in both Denver and Oklahoma City.

• Legislative Recommendation: OVC recommended that VOCA be amended to provide $500,000 in additional funding to assist the victims of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City to attend the trial proceedings in Denver. These funds should be made available from the OVC reserve fund authorized by Section 1402(d)(4).

The accomplishments described in this report close out the first decade of extraordinary VOCA-funded victim services. As OVC enters its second decade, we are mindful of the many challenges ahead, but hopeful that with strong leadership from the President and the Congress, coupled with the continued support of an Attorney General who has established victims' issues as a top priority, justice and healing will indeed become a reality for all crime victims in America.

Aileen Adams
Director

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