CONTENTS of this NATIONAL VICTIMS RIGHTS section of the website:

STORIES ON THIS PAGE:

IllinoisVictims.org Joins Advisory Committee to United States Congressional Victims Rights Caucus

October 2008 Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, founder of IllinoisVictims.org has joined the Advisory Committee to the United States Congressional Victims Rights Caucus. The first meeting was November 18 in Washington DC. Contact Jennifer with suggestions for this advisory group.

November 2008 Jennifer attends the post-Presidential Election gathering of the National Leadership Council on Crime Victim Justice, lovingly called the "Old Buffaloes". There we brainstormed about what direction the national victim movement needed to take in the new Obama administration. Many good ideas about succession planning, policy hubs for the Office of Victims of Crime, protecting the VOCA fund, and working proactively on sentencing, restorative justice, victims rights, and other agenda items were discussed.

APRIL 2009 - Jennifer travels to Washington D.C. to advise the US Congressional Victims Rights Caucus about the national trends in prison sentencing and leads the national victims movement discussion in addressing what role victims rights should play in the latest trends. Her presentation will be open to the public Friday April 24, 2009 at a victims policy forum at on Capitol Hill. The Rayburn Office Building, 8:30 to 11 am.

Rural Areas, often unable to provide Victim Services, get a boost from the Feds

Through a grant from the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), our good friends at the National Sheriffs’ Association are offering free on-site training and technical assistance to rural Sheriffs’ Offices and Police Departments working to establish or enhance a Victim Services Program within their agencies. Some of the topics of the training and technical assistance include:

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OCTOBER is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

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MARSY'S LAW Will Help Victims Everywhere

Marsy’s Law – Prop 9 will establish a Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights in the California constitution. Victims and survivors will be guaranteed rights in the investigation, bail, prosecution and parole processes. Victims will be protected from harassment by the criminals and their attorneys. Victims and survivors will be treated with respect and dignity in all phases of the criminal process. California was the first state to really get victims rights in their state Constitution in the 80's, and therefore was very limited - Restitution being the only real right guaranteed. With so few protections to make victims rights enforceable, the passage of this important revisions to state law will help raise standards for enforceability of victims rights all over the nation.

For more information visit www.friendsofmarsyslaw.org

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Victims Rights In Both Party Platforms in 2008

The Platforms of both parties are complete and BOTH mention victims rights. Here is the language the national victims rights movement leaders developed and submitted to both parties:

PROPOSED

2008 Bipartisan Party Platform Language
for Victims of Crime

In recent decades, a movement has arisen to bring compassion and justice to people who had been dealt harshly by the criminals among us and then treated with indifference or worse by their agencies of government. The reforms fostered by the crime victims’ movement speak to the best that is within us, and to the diversity of our society. Victims of child abuse found their champions, and then a network of specialized agencies to bring their perpetrators to justice and their victims to comfort and safety. Champions of the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence followed suit, and all these groups made common cause with allies in criminal justice who began to welcome victim participation into their work. The victims’ movement is forever broadening, responding to the needs of victims of drunk driving, stalking, human trafficking, homicide, terrorism and mass violence, to name a few, while lodging an ever-deepening presence in the professions of social and health services, and calling forth the compassionate services uniquely rendered by America’s faith communities.

Their work is far from complete, and they look to their national leaders to sustain the movement for victim justice. There is no better starting point than the Federal government’s scheduled re-examination of how victims are being treated in its own justice agencies.

The Government Accountability Office will soon report on the effectiveness of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act in securing justice for crime victims in the Federal system. We call on the Federal government to use this report as a springboard to a wider review of the totality of how governments at all levels are meeting their duties to treat crime victims with fairness, dignity and respect under the “social contract,” the philosophy of what government owes its citizens under our constitutional system. That review must necessarily re-examine the merits of embedding victims' rights where they truly belong -- within our nation's Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.

Under that compact, we hold that basic notification and participation rights are due crime victims involved in the justice system of every American jurisdiction, as is the right to full restitution from convicted offenders. Congress and the next Administration should examine whether these hallmarks of justice, once the birthright of all Americans at our founding, are being observed across the land, and where gaps in the provision of basic victim justice are found, to devise and implement methods of redress from these wrongs.

We also hold that, just as procedural justice is due American crime victims, so too are skilled compassion and care required to tend to the spiritual, physical, emotional, social, and financial wounds that crime inflicts on its prey. While the duty to provide remedial care falls most heavily on crime victims, survivors and their loved ones, and on their communities and states, the Federal government has fostered major improvements in these networks of victim assistance, a role from which it has lately retreated. It is time for our national government to return to a position of leadership in the rehabilitation and restoration of those wounded by criminal acts.

To that end, we are fully committed to providing adequate resources for crime victim services by preserving the Crime Victims Fund, which for more than two decades has used criminal fines and penalties – rather than taxpayer dollars – to support thousands of programs that help millions of crime victims in their recovery. We are committed to ensuring that funding from the Crime Victims Fund for these programs through VOCA’s state victim assistance grants shall be no less than the amount they received in 2006. We are also fully committed to providing full funding for all Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) and Family Violence Prevention and Services Act programs.

We also believe that, in its wider review of how to serve victims with greater respect and compassion, the government should look beyond the role of criminal and juvenile justice agencies, vital as they are, to all other sectors of government with responsibilities to prevent crime and reduce its harm on individuals, families, communities and our Nation as a whole. Agencies of physical and mental health, education, housing, emergency assistance, and faith community coordination, among many others, should cooperate in implementing holistic responses to identify and address crime victims’ needs, and in turn, the Federal government should establish an independent National Office for Victims of Crime with the same reach across all agencies of government as the current such office now enjoys, in a far-too-limited way, only within the U.S. Department of Justice.
 

Here is the link to the actual Democratic Party Platform and its one sentence summary of its support for victims rights:

http://www.demconvention.com/the-democratic-platform/

Here is the link to the Republican Party platform with its more detailed statement on Victims Rights

The Republican Party's National Platform for the 2008 elections

FEDERAL LEGISLATION IMPORTANT TO CRIME VICTIMS

Illinois' own Congressman Rahm Emmanuel is the lead sponsor on an important protection long overdue to victims of crime - that our jobs be kept safe if we have to take off work to go to court. Read the press release below and contact your Congressman to support this important bill.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                   CONTACT:

Thursday, April 17, 2008                        Kathleen Connery, 202-226-7639

                                                  Sarah Feinberg and Nick Papas, 202-225-1400

Emanuel to Expand FMLA to Protect Victims of Violent Crime and Domestic Violence

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) introduced the Crime Victims Employment Leave Act which would extend the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to protect victims of violent crime and domestic violence. This legislation would protect victims of violent crimes and domestic violence and their families from being terminated or demoted by offering them time off for the required court proceedings.

“No victim of violent crime should have to choose between their job and medical attention.  No one should fear reprisal from their employer if they need to attend court proceedings,” said Emanuel. “National Crime Victims Rights Week reminds us of how important it is that we work to protect the most vulnerable.  And we should never punish victims and their families for the crimes committed against them.”

Arizona, Colorado and Maine have enacted laws to protect victims from being terminated, demoted or required to use their leave time for court proceedings. No such protections exist at the federal level.  For the first time, the Crime Victims Employment Leave Act will afford this protection to the entire nation. 

“When my brother Howard was murdered in Phoenix, Arizona I exercised my state constitutional right to be present at every court proceeding—to represent my family--between the two defendants I wound up using up all my vacation time and was written up with a letter of reprimand and threatened with termination after 3 unexcused absences. I would like to thank Rep. Rahm Emanuel for his leadership on this issue—no victim/survivor of crime should be left with choosing between the right they have to attend court proceedings and their employment” said Dan Levey, National President of Parents Of Murdered Children, Inc.

“Extending the benefits of the Family & Medical Leave Act to victims of domestic violence and other violent crimes is humane, compassionate, and long overdue,” said National Partnership for Women & Families President Debra L. Ness.  “We thank Representative Rahm Emanuel for sponsoring the legislation, and urge the House to waste no time in passing it.  Providing unpaid, job-protected leave is critically important for those who are trying to protect themselves and their children.”

“Too often, victims are unable to exercise their right to attend criminal court proceedings because they are afraid they will lose their job,” noted Mary Lou Leary, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.   “We commend Congressman Emanuel for introducing legislation to make this right under the law a right in fact.”

Original cosponsors of the Crime Victims Employment Leave Act include U.S. Representatives George Miller (D-CA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Lynn Woosley (D-CA) and Gary Ackerman (D-NY).

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