National Training Conference 2008:
San Diego, September 8-12, 2008 . . . The National Association of Crime Victim Compensation Boards invites its membership to join in our next National Training Conference in San Diego, September 8-12. Details have been sent to all compensation programs. You also can check out the "members only" portion of our site for more information. [Please note that information about accessing our members-only pages has been sent to each compensation program manager. The site is open to all our member state victim compensation programs, which would include personnel working for a state compensation agency, and to the district and county compensation programs in Colorado and Arizona.]

The Association's latest newsletter has been mailed to all compensation programs. Included are articles on our San Diego conference; the latest on the dire straits that VOCA assistance grants are in; a new "cold-case" policy in Denver, and authorization in Utah to begin using a medical fee schedule; and a summary of evaluations from our 2007 National Training Conference.

Contact NACVCB at (703) 780-3200; e-mail nacvcb@aol.com; P.O. Box 7054, Alexandria, VA 22307.

Crime Victim Compensation Helps Victims . . .

• Victims of violent crime and their families received benefits totaling $453 million in federal fiscal year 2007. This was an increase from the $426 million paid in 2005, and the $444 million in 2006.
• Programs paid $22.9 million for forensic sexual assault exams, a 10% increase from 2006.
• Victims of child abuse comprised 18.5% of the recipients of crime victim compensation.
• Domestic violence victims were 25% of all adult victims compensated (crimes other than child abuse, drunk driving, and international terrorism). Of all assault claims, 34% are paid to domestic violence victims.
• Medical expenses were 51% of all payments; economic support for lost wages for injured victims, and for lost support in homicides, comprised 17% of the total; 11% of total payments went for funeral bills; and 8% went toward mental health counseling for crime victims.
  
  Click here for a FACT SHEET on Crime Victim Compensation. Click here for a current contact list of state compensation programs.
• For information about an individual state victim compensation program, click on the Program Directory on the menu in the upper-left-hand corner of this page.
  

Essential VOCA for Compensation Programs

An effort to capture in a one-page summary all of the essential provisions relating to compensation programs contained in the Victims of Crime Act -- Click here to see. For Word document version, click here. (This is an Association summary, not from the Office for Victims of Crime.)

States Face Budget Problems

State legislatures may be eyeing crime victim compensation program funding in some states in efforts to meet substantial budget shortfalls in the coming year. Twenty-two states have projected budget gaps for FY 2009, including shortfalls of 15% in California, 16% in Arizona, 11% in Florida and Rhode Island, and close to 10% in Alabama, New York, and New Jersey.
In prior years, several compensation programs' funds have been raided by legislatures. Reminding lawmakers that many more victims could be seeking compensation; that mass violence is always a threat and would require sudden greater outlays to victims; and that some "reserve" is necessary to prevent backlogs may be among the strategies useful in countering unwanted compensation fund reductions.

Compensation programs have struggled to keep up with demand in recent years, with some states facing dire fiscal crises. Some programs that have managed to do well fiscally have then faced having funds taken away from legislatures for other purposes. With cuts in private insurance and on the Medicaid rolls (a byproduct of state budget crises), an explosion in health care costs, and an increase in the violent crime rate (after 10 years of decline), state compensation programs continue to seek sufficient funding to provide adequate financial assistance to victims of child abuse, domestic violence, rape, assault, and murder.

VOCA Budget -- FY '08 and '09

The President has signed an appropriations bill that reduced the VOCA cap for funding in federal fiscal year 2008 to $590 million, a cut of $35 million from last year, and the lowest level in many years.
VOCA assistance grants to states will be down 17% from the level of two years ago. Assistance grants will be $42 million less than last year, which comes on top of a $25 million cut from FY 2006.

Now, the President's budget for FY 2009 calls for another $590 million cap, which when combined with some other adjustments to VOCA spending, will result in nearly a 25% cut for VOCA assistance funding from FY 2006 levels. In real numbers, this is almost a $100 million drop in VOCA assistance grants to states. The Administration also once again seeks a total rescission of amounts collected into the Crime Victims Fund up until the present.

Compensation grants to states this fiscal year will not be affected, and will remain at 60% of each state's payout in federal fiscal year 2006. Compensation grants next fiscal year (federal FY 2009) also are not expected to change..
Why are compensation grants unchanged, while VOCA assistance grants are cut so severely? It has to do with the way VOCA's formula works in distributing the total amount available within the VOCA cap set by Congress. After a number of earmarks are satisfied (principally for victim-witness staff in U.S. Attorney's and FBI offices, and for Children's Justice Act grants), the remainder of the VOCA cap amount is divided three ways: OVC gets 5% for grants and projects, and then the rest is split equally between VOCA's two major grant streams: crime victim compensation, and victim assistance. If there's enough in that compensation set-aside to give each compensation program a grant equal to 60% of its state-dollar payout, then any left-over amount flows over to the assistance side to increase those grants. This always has been the case-money flowing from the compensation set-aside to the VOCA assistance side-since the total of all the state's 60% grants is far less than what is initially set aside. But if compensation grants grow-and this also has been the case recently, as compensation programs pay more money to victims-then less flows over to assistance. And if the total VOCA cap is smaller, as is the situation this year, then there is less money in the VOCA assistance set-aside and the compensation set-aside to begin with.

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Founded in 1977, the National Association of Crime Victim Compensation Boards promotes an exchange of information and ideas through a nationwide network of victim compensation programs. The Association advances better methods for serving crime victims through various training and technical assistance activities, helping its members establish sound administrative practices, achieve fiscal stability, and engage in effective outreach, communication and advocacy. The Association maintains an executive office near Washington, D.C. from which it works actively to provide support to its members and represent their interests. NACVCB, P.O. Box 16003, Alexandria, VA 22302; phone 703-780-3200; nacvcb@aol.com. Read disclaimers and privacy policy.