Grassley Leads Effort to Safeguard Federal Support for Crime Victims

WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a senior member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, along with Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), are conducting congressional oversight to ensure the Justice Department (DOJ) maintains adequate funding to compensate crime victims. Recent DOJ data reveals the agency has redirected money intended for the Crime Victims Fund (CVF), which is already running a historically low balance.

“Congress has acted time and again to ensure that the CVF has adequate funding streams; yet, the Justice Department apparently hasn’t done the work necessary to ensure funds that should be deposited in the CVF are, in fact, deposited. Simply put, this is absolutely unacceptable,” the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“The Justice Department’s lack of oversight and responsibility to ensure criminal fines and penalties from criminal [deferred prosecution agreements], [non-prosecution agreements], guilty pleas, and convictions are deposited into the CVF as required by statute has created a lack of resources to fund victim assistance and compensation programs around the country. The decreasing CVF balance and deposits [have] put service providers across the country at significant risk of having to cut both programs and staff that support victims and survivors of crime,” the senators continued.

Read the senators’ full letter HERE. 

Background

Congress as part of the 1984 Victims of Crimes Act (VOCA) established the CVF to provide states grants to cover the cost of victim recovery resources, including counseling services, legal assistance, funeral expenses and more. The CVF is a taxpayer-neutral fund; its balance is comprised of fines and penalties collected through federal criminal convictions and settlements. 

Grassley in 2020 joined bipartisan Senate colleagues in sending a letter to DOJ regarding the CVF’s financial health in light of significant decreases in the fund’s deposits. Then, Congress in 2021 passed the Grassley-backed VOCA Fix to Sustain the Crime Victims Fund Act to shore up the CVF as the fund’s balance dwindled. This law expanded CVF’s funding stream by requiring DOJ to deposit fines collected through federal deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) and non-prosecution agreements (NPAs) into the fund. However, DOJ data, provided at Grassley’s persistent request, shows DOJ is diverting these DPA and NPA dollars away from the CVF, contrary to congressional intent and harming the fund’s fiscal health. 

-30-