PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island has been allocated $4.2 million in federal funds to support victims of crime, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., announced Wednesday.
The R.I. Department of Public Safety will received $3.7 million from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Crime Victims Fund to enhance victim services in the state. The funds will be awarded by the state to local community-based organizations to provide direct services to crime victims, including victims of domestic violence, child and elder abuse, and human trafficking.
In addition, the R.I. Treasury has been allocated $502,000 from the CVF to enhance State Victim Compensation payments to eligible crime victims in the state.
“This funding is vitally important to helping victims of crime recover and heal. It can help pay medical bills and funeral costs and cover lost wages or other expenses associated with serious crimes,” Reed stated.
The Crime Victims Fund uses fines and monetary penalties against criminal defendants who lost at trial to provide social services and compensation to crime victims at no cost to taxpayers. The senators noted that the funds in the program had declined in recent years, largely due to greater use of deferred prosecutions and non-prosecution agreements.
“We recently passed a bipartisan legislative fix to replenish [Victims of Crime Act] programs at no cost to taxpayers, which will provide a big boost to the local organizations doing the heroic work of supporting victims every day,” Whitehouse said in a statement.
The changes made by the VOCA Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in July, included directing criminal settlements from federal non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements into the CVF, increasing the percentage that state compensation programs are reimbursed by the federal government from 60% to 75% and providing additional flexibility for state victim compensation programs to provide compensation to victims, among other changes.
