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Blogs / Crime and Victimization
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Crime and Victimization
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- 10/03/2011
Law enforcement agencies increasingly recognize the value of the U-visa (officially known as “U” nonimmigrant status) as a community-policing and crime-fighting tool. This type of visa provides temporary legal status to immigrant crime victims in the United States who are helpful to law enforcement.
- 08/09/2011
In this inaugural issue of The Guardian Reporter, a biannual newsletter produced by Vera’s Guardianship Project:
- Forging new collaborations: a guide for rape crisis, domestic violence, and disability organizations05/18/2011
Between 2006 and 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women funded the development of collaborations between victim services and disability organizations in more than 40 communities to ensure people with disabilities who have experienced domestic or sexual violence have the community-based supports and criminal justice responses they need to heal. This report, based upon Vera's work with these burgeoning collaborations, recommends steps for building effective collaboration and practical strategies for overcoming common obstacles.
Projects
Projects
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Vera’s Accessing Safety Initiative (ASI) helps its partner jurisdictions—states and cities—enhance the capacity of their social services and criminal justice systems to assist women with disabilities & Deaf women who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
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Common Justice offers an alternative to the traditional court process for youth charged with felonies such as assault, robbery, and burglary. Project staff bring together people immediately affected by a crime to acknowledge the harm done, address the needs of the harmed party, and agree on sanctions other than incarceration to hold the responsible party accountable. The project, based in Brooklyn, New York, seeks to repair harm, break cycles of violence, and decrease the system’s heavy reliance on incarceration.
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Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit (CBAU), in conjunction with the Center on Youth Justice, is working with the North Carolina Youth Accountability Planning Task Force to estimate the costs and benefits associated with raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction.
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The Supervised Visitation Initiative (SVI) works with supervised visitation programs funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women to enhance their capacity to effectively and safely serve families who have experienced domestic violence. The initiative provides these programs with training, tailored consultation, and access to information on best practices from programs across the country.
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Responding to sexual assault in a correctional facility requires great skill, coordination, and sensitivity, as well as an understanding of the unique challenges presented by a confined setting. In its 2009 national standards and final report, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission called on correctional facilities to develop a sexual assault response protocol based on the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2004 National Protocol for Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examinations, Adults/Adolescents. CVS’s Sexual Assault Forensic Protocol Project is working with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to develop a guide for prisons, jails, residential community corrections, and lockups for adapting the national protocol to these environments.
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Over the past 45 years, the crime victims’ movement has made great strides toward meeting victims’ needs and has emerged as a powerful source of social, legal, and political change. Despite these advances, crime and violence continue to affect a significant number of people in the United States each year, and challenges persist to providing appropriate services for all victims. Although a variety of critical services exist for some crime victims, many marginalized people who experience violence often are left without adequate resources, support, and treatment options. Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services seeks to dramatically expand the vision and impact of the crime victim services field in order to meet the needs of all crime victims. It aims to do so by strategically defining the role of the victim services field in the nation’s efforts to ensure the safety and wellbeing of communities.
Archived Projects
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Vera’s Washington DC Office is working with the congressionally mandated National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) to develop standards to detect, prevent, and respond to sexual assault in jails, prisons, lock-ups, and immigration, juvenile, and community-corrections facilities.
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Significant advances in our country’s responses to violence against women have occurred since the passage of the landmark federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Unfortunately, many practitioners working to address violence against women do not have ready access to information about successful approaches that could enhance their efforts. The Promising Practices Initiative led a national effort for the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women to identify and share promising practices that were developed since 1994 to address domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
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The Sexual Violence Prevention Initiative (SVPI) was a partnership with the New Jersey Coalition Against Sexual Assault and 22 community-based agencies that served victims of sexual violence and their communities. Its goal was to integrate primary prevention strategies into the agencies’s existing activities.
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In April 2009, Vera's Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) began a year-long process evaluation of Washington, DC's four-and-a-half-year (2005 through mid-2010) effort to reform its juvenile institutional placement system. This process evaluation, funded by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, sought to document Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services’ (DYRS) strategy for the reforms, as well as to assess the implementation of the changes, which drew inspiration from the highly regarded Missouri Model of juvenile justice practice.
Related Centers & Programs
Blog
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According to a new report released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every minute of every day, 24 people in the United States are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. This means that every year more than 12 million women and men expe...
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On December 6, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Advisory Board voted to update the definition it uses for rape, last modified in 1929. The existing definition excludes drug- and alcohol-facilitated assaults, leaves out male victims, and does not take into account assaults involving anal or oral pene...
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In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, communities nationwide are hosting a range of activities to commemorate victims who lost their lives to violence, to recognize survivors in the process of healing, and to promote advances in legal policy and law enforcement practice that hol...
Vera in the News
Experts
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Director, Sexual Violence Prevention Initiative (SVPI)
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Director, Common Justice
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Director, Center on Victimization and Safety



