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Critical fund for US domestic violence victims faces major cuts
Lizzie Tribone
Crime Victims Fund, essential lifeline for services such as hotlines and legal assistance for survivors, stands to lose $700m.
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Advocates are bracing for a major funding cut to a critical source of support for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse in the US that will take effect later this year.
A total of 37%, or $700m, will be slashed from the national Crime Victims Fund, an essential lifeline for state and local services such as domestic violence hotlines and legal assistance for survivors, when the government’s next fiscal year begins in October.
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““The consequences of not being able to access services are so dire. And we worry, of course, that it is deadly,” Monica McLaughlin, senior director of public policy at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said.
Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act (Voca) in 1984, which established the Crime Victims Fund. The latter collects fines and penalties from people and corporations convicted of federal crimes and distributes that funding to states, which in turn issue grants to state and local victim service agencies.
In 2018, deposits into the Crime Victims Fund were at a record high: $4.4bn. It will stand at only $1.2bn next year.
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The crisis in Voca funding stems from seemingly arcane bureaucratic tweaks to government budgeting mechanisms that have inadvertently depleted the fund in recent years.
In 2017, the Department of Justice was increasingly settling federal cases without prosecution. Money from those settlements went into the general treasury instead of the Crime Victims Fund. Congress passed legislation in 2021 to redirect these funds into the Crime Victims Fund – but this legislative change has been too little, too late.
At the same time, Congress has been transferring funds from the Crime Victims Fund to programs established by the Violence Against Women Act.
“This is eliminating one debt by incurring another,” Deanna Dyer, policy director at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said.
While Voca funding has historically been hard to predict because of its reliance on case outcomes, these factors have led to feast-or-famine cycles: a healthy Crime Victims Fund one year can sour the next, and victim support programs are funded at the expense of one another. A tipping point is now approaching as the fund dwindles and federal grants are running out.
More than 6 million victims and survivors across the United States stand to lose essential services, including many domestic violence survivors who depend on Voca-funded services – at a time when domestic violence and reproductive coercion are on the rise and service providers are already struggling to respond to demand.
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