Relates to reports and awards by the office of victim services

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Julia Salazar says this is needed

In 1984, Congress established the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) to provide federal oversight and support to state-administered victim compensation programs. Under VOCA, the Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime (DOJ OVC) was created to administer the Crime Victims Fund, which consists of dollars collected via fines, fees, and settlement agreements associated with federal crimes. A significant percentage of these funds directly compensates crime victims for their financial losses resulting from victimization, such as medical and counseling expenses, lost wages, and temporary housing. Victims and survivors of crime must satisfy eligibility criteria that vary across the states, but generally there are a few core requirements: (1) physical injury; (2) reporting of the crime; (3) a lack of direct or contributory involvement in the subject crime; and (4) the absence of collateral sources that might otherwise compensate for victim and survivor expenses. Though victim compensation programs are intended, to assist in the prac- tical consequences of victimization, current statutory and regulatory regimes do not adequately meet the needs of victims. For example, only one in five crime survivors is aware that post-victimization funds exist, according to the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers. Further, only one in twelve crime survivors actually receive compen- sation to recover from their victimization, according to the Alliance or Safety and Justice. This overwhelming lack of awareness and access to victim compensation strongly indicates that program promotion has not been prioritized. These statutory and regulatory inadequacies are worsened by substantive contributory conduct provisions that force programs to assess a victim's behavior before and during their victimization. Contributory conduct assessments follow an opaque process and are often subjective in nature, informed by the biases of different actors throughout the criminal justice system. According to the Associated Press, for instance, Black applicants in the State of New York are more likely to be denied under the logic that their own behavior provoked victimization. Indeed, when a crime survivor is denied pursuant to contributory conduct in New York, the victim is told that they are not an "innocent victim of crime" and therefore cannot be eligible for compensation. Conspicuously, there is no federal victim compensation provision that mandate such contributory conduct assessments. The Governor and legislature recognized this issue in the 2024-2025 enacted budget, when they removed the contributory conduct provision from the law for victims of homicide. This bill goes further and eliminates the provision for all crime victims. Federal law, however, does require state victim compensation programs to be the "payor-of-last resort," meaning federal and federally financed state programs must be considered collateral sources where they would otherwise cover expenses eligible for state compensation. Despite VOCA's specific prescription on collateral sources, some compensation programs take an expansive view of the payor-of-last resort obligation, extending their consideration of collateral sources to include private donations and crowdfunding. DOJ OVC in particular has issued clarifying guidance that discusses the unfairness of using crowdfunding for collat- eral source assessments, noting that consideration of such private donations is functionally similar to means testing, which VOCA does not require. DO OVC further added that crowdfunding campaigns are frequent- ly not controlled by the benefitting victims and survivors, nor are they always organized to pay for expenses that victim compensation would cover. Federal law is therefore more permissive on the payor-of-last resort obligations that it imposes as a condition of receiving compen- sation funding from DOJ OVC. Accordingly, this bill would reconcile New York's compensation statute with the more limited

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.