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Crime Victim Services funding bill to provide millions for Colorado advocacy centers

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- A bill that would provide millions in funding for crime victim advocacy centers has passed the Colorado House and Senate, and now awaits Gov. Jared Polis' signature.

In 2016, the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance (COVA) started to experience a dramatic decrease of funds.

“At the federal level we have something called the Victims of Crime Act Fund (VOCA) and that is when primarily big corporate wrong-doers end up getting criminal penalties and they pay fines and fees into the VOCA fund," said Sterling Harris, COVA's Public Policy Director.

Harris explained a big reason behind that was due to an increase in non-prosecution agreements. That resulted in fewer fines going into the VOCA fund, which helps keep community-based advocacy centers up and running to help crime victims deal with their trauma.

“Unfortunately we were also seeing state grants had plummeted anywhere from 40 to 60%," Harris said. "We knew that in Colorado, victim service agencies were going to experience 41% cuts.”

Harris tells KRDO, that on top of all that, money that goes toward victim services through the Victim and Law Enforcement (VALE) grant significantly dropped. VALE money comes from convicted criminals who pay a fine. This comes largely due to the pandemic when courts came to a standstill.

“This coincided with a huge wave of crime victimization, domestic violence cases spiked," Harris said. "We have had some folks refer to what is happening in Colorado as crime tsunami. Anytime there is a violent crime there is always going to be at least one victim attached to it. So we knew starting in 2023 if we did not do something, for victims service agencies the bottom was literally going to fall out.”

Because of all these factors, advocates for crime victim agencies pushed for legislators to take action during this legislative season, which yielded SB22-183. If signed, it will provide a combined amount of $48 million for designated victim services funding, broken down into the following categories:

  • $6 million for the Domestic Violence Program at the Department of Human Services.
  • $38 million for the Crime Victim Services Fund at the Office of Victims Programs in the Division of Criminal Justice
  • $3 million for local VALE grants
  • $1 million for the Community Crime Victim Grant Program at the Department of Public Health and Environment

"What this money is going to mean is domestic violence shelters don’t have to cut their staff, rape crisis programs who already have tremendous waiting lists for things like therapy are going to at least be able to continue to meet the demand the best that they can," Harris said. "I want to be clear though. Although this funding bill is incredibly generous of $48 million, it is not to enhance services. This is just to keep an already struggling baseline and to keep the bottom from falling out.”

Article Topic Follows: News
Colorado Springs
crime
Legislation
local news
victim

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Cindy Centofanti

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