The Office for Victims of Crime is pleased to announce the release of the Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services Final Report, the first comprehensive assessment of the victim assistance field in nearly 15 years. The Vision 21 initiative gave participants the opportunity to engage with a broad spectrum of service providers, advocates, criminal justice professionals, allied practitioners, and policymakers to address crime victim issues through a lens broader than their everyday work. The result of this collective examination, the report seeks to permanently transform the way crime victims are treated in this country. The Vision 21: Transforming Victim Services Final Report discusses the following:
- Major challenges to the integration of research into victim services.
- The tremendous need for crime victims to have access to legal assistance to address the wide range of legal issues that can arise following victimization.
- The impact of advances in technology, globalization, and changing demographics on the victim assistance field.
- The capacity for serving victims in the 21st century and some of the infrastructure issues that must be overcome to reach that capacity.
Furthermore, the final report outlines recommendations for beginning the transformative change, which fall into the following four broad categories:
- Conducting continuous rather than episodic strategic planning in the victim assistance field to effect real change in research, policy, programming, and capacity building.
- Supporting research to build a body of evidence-based knowledge and generate, collect, and analyze quantitative and qualitative data on victimization, emerging victimization trends, services and behaviors, and victims’ rights enforcement efforts.
- Ensuring the statutory, policy, and programmatic flexibility to address enduring and emerging crime victim issues.
- Building and institutionalizing capacity through an infusion of technology, training, and innovation to ensure that the field is equipped to meet the demands of the 21st century.
May 2013