President Trump ran on a pro-law enforcement, “tough on crime” approach to criminal activity. A month ago, the White House claimed to offer “unending support to every victim of crime.”
Well, apparently that support just ended.
Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced — no, she bragged — that she was cutting $800 million in grants, including those providing services and support to crime victims.
The suggestion that there is massive “bloat” in helping people who have been violently victimized is absurd. The Department of Justice should look to its own history to understand how victims have been ignored and retraumatized by the criminal justice system, how Congress has taken steps to improve this and how hundreds of nonprofit organizations have been filling in the gaps.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan created the President’s Task Force on Victims of Crime to address the needs of the millions of Americans and their families who were victimized by crime and ignored by the criminal justice system. This task force’s research described a system that was “appallingly out of balance“ for victims, with a “neglect of crime victims” that was “a national disgrace.”
The fiscally conservative Reagan administration recognized the need to have Congress provide federal funding “to assist in the operation of federal, state, local and non-profit victim/witness assistance agencies that make comprehensive assistance available to all victims of crime.” And Congress did so.
Nonprofit organizations also did so, helping to fill the gap and repair the trauma inflicted on innocent crime victims. National organizations such as the National Center for Victims of Crime and the National Crime Victim Law Institute ensure that critical services are provided to victims of child sex trafficking, domestic violence, rural crime victims and other violent crimes every day.
Locally, many grassroots organizations rely on such grants to serve people in immediate need. These include programs such as the “Emmett Till cold case investigations and prosecution program” in New Orleans and a program that serves human trafficking victims in Virginia — both of which the Department of Justice cut. These organizations do tremendous work, but this funding has never been an adequate amount to make victims whole.
And yet, last month the Trump administration announced massive cuts to victim services because they no longer are “aligned with Trump administration priorities.” Apparently, a national hotline connecting tens of thousands of victims to services, as the National Center for Victims of Crime’s VictimConnect Resource Center does, was not a Department of Justice priority. Similarly, filling this gap by training nearly 2,500 victim attorneys and advocates from 36 states across 30 trainings to serve victims of crime, as the National Crime Victim Law Institute did last year alone, is not a priority under Bondi. It seems that providing sign language interpreters for deaf victims, a study of elder abuse victims and a program to keep prison guards safe are also not Justice Department priorities.
Since the cuts were announced, the Department of Justice has at least temporarily reversed two of them. But it should be noted that the department initially claimed the cuts were all “meticulously reviewed.”
The threat to victims remains clear. Congress must act preemptively to ensure that these programs are protected and the Department of Justice gets its “priorities” back in line.
More than 40 years ago, Reagan’s Presidential Task Force found that “the innocent victims of crime have been overlooked, their cries for justice have gone unheeded, and their wounds — personal, emotional, and financial — have gone unattended.” Today, the Department of Justice must live up to its promise to crime victims, and Congress must heed the cries of victims and protect these needed — yet barely adequate — services from the Trump administration’s assault.
It is one thing to suffer the attack of a violent criminal; it is quite another to be assaulted by the Department of Justice when it terminates crucial services. Congress is all that stands between victims and this re-traumatization. It must stand up to the Department of Justice and insist that their newfound “priorities” include these critical victim services.
Mary G. Leary is a professor of law at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law.
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