Subject: Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim Compensation Grant Program

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <SUBAGY>Office of Justice Programs</SUBAGY> <CFR>28 CFR Part 94</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No.: OJP (OVC) 1808]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1121-AA89</RIN> <SUBJECT>Subject: Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim Compensation Grant Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of Justice Programs (“OJP”), a bureau of the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime (“OVC”) proposes adding a subpart to its regulations to replace the existing Victims of Crime Act (“VOCA”) Victim Compensation Program Guidelines (“Guidelines”), and update and codify program requirements for the VOCA Victim Compensation Formula Grant Program (“Victim Compensation Program”). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by no later than 11:59 p.m., E.T., on April 5, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Electronic comments:</E> OVC encourages commenters to submit all comments electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal, which provides the ability to type comments directly into the comment field on the web page or attach a file. Please go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the on-line instructions at that site for submitting comments. Upon completion of your submission, you will receive a Comment Tracking Number. Submitted comments are not instantaneously available for public view on <E T="03">regulations.gov.</E> If you have received a Comment Tracking Number, you have submitted your comment successfully and there is no need to resubmit the same comment. Commenters should be aware that the system will not accept comments after 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the last day of the comment period. <E T="03">Paper comments:</E> OVC prefers to receive comments via <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> where possible. Paper comments that duplicate electronic submissions are not necessary and are discouraged. Should you wish to mail a paper comment in lieu of an electronic comment, it should be sent via regular or express mail to: VOCA Compensation Rule Comments, Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, 810 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20531. To ensure proper handling of comments, please reference “RIN 1121-AA89” on all electronic and written correspondence, including any attachments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kathrina Peterson, Division Director, Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, 810 Seventh Street NW, Washington, DC 20531; (202) 616-3579 (please note that this is not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Posting of Public Comments</HD> Please note that all comments received are considered part of the public record and made available for public inspection online at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Such information includes personal identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter. The Freedom of Information Act applies to all comments received. If you wish to submit personal identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) as part of your comment, but do not wish for it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also place all of the personal identifying information that you do not want posted online in the first paragraph of your comment and identify with specificity what information you want the agency to redact. If you wish to submit confidential business information as part of your comment, but do not wish it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also prominently identify all confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment has so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, the agency may choose not to post all or part of that comment. Personal identifying information identified and located as set forth above will be placed in the agency's public docket file, but not posted online. Confidential business information identified and located as set forth above will not be placed in the public docket file. If you wish to inspect the agency's public docket file in person by appointment, please see the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> paragraph. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Executive Summary</HD> OJP's Office for Victims of Crime (“OVC”) administers the VOCA Victim Compensation Grant Program (“Victim Compensation Program”). The Victims of Crime Act of 1984 (“VOCA”), Public Law 98-473, sec. 1403, 34 U.S.C. 20102, authorizes the Victim Compensation Program, through which OVC provides an annual grant to State  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> victim compensation programs in amounts determined by statutory formula based on prior year expenditures of those programs, provided that the programs meet the VOCA criteria. State compensation programs make payments to reimburse victims of crime (or, in some cases, third-party providers on behalf of victims) for certain expenses incurred as a result of crime. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For purposes of this notice, the term “State” includes the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, and any other possession or territory of the United States. 34 U.S.C. 20102(d)(4) (defining “State” for VOCA Compensation). </FTNT> The proposed rule proposes to replace the existing Victim Compensation Program Guidelines (“Guidelines”), published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on May 16, 2001, at 66 FR 95, and update and codify program requirements. The proposed rule retains most of the substance of the current Guidelines, with various modest technical and substantive updates, primarily to account for statutory or procedural changes since 2001, and to clarify or streamline existing provisions. Of note, the proposed rule would clarify and streamline the policies and definitions regarding who may be considered a survivor of a victim; medical and dental expenses; property damage expenses; sexual assault forensic exam expenses; the requirement that States promote victim cooperation with the reasonable requests of law enforcement; consideration of a victim's or survivor's immigration status, criminal history, or alleged contributory conduct in claim determinations; and crowdfunded resources. It would make it easier for States to seek reimbursement for costs associated with recovery efforts (recovering payment amounts via restitution and subrogation). It would address extensions of grant performance periods and better describe OVC's discretion in remedying erroneous State certification of payments. The benefits of this proposed rule outweigh the potential costs. A full analysis of costs and benefits is provided below in the regulatory certifications section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Overview of the VOCA Compensation Program</HD> OVC's Victim Compensation Program provides an annual grant to eligible State-operated crime victim compensation programs, which reimburse victims of crime (or, in some cases, third-party providers on behalf of victims) for certain expenses incurred as a result of crime. The Victim Compensation Program is funded from the Crime Victims Fund. The Fund receives Federal criminal fines, penalties, and assessments, as well as certain gifts and bequests, but does not receive any general tax revenue. The Crime Victims Fund is administered by OVC, and amounts that may be obligated therefrom are allocated each year according to the VOCA formula at 34 U.S.C. 20101. The amount annually available for obligation through the VOCA formula allocations typically (since Federal fiscal year 2000) has been set by statute, through limits specified in the annual Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations act, at less than the total amount available in the Fund. The VOCA formula specifies that (in most years) the first $20M available in the Fund for that year is to go toward child abuse prevention and treatment programs (via grants made by the Department of Health and Human Services), with a certain amount to be set-aside for OVC grants to address child abuse in Indian Country. After that, such sums as may be necessary are available to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney's Offices to improve services to victims of Federal crime, and to operate a victim notification system. The remaining balance is allocated as follows: 47.5% for OVC's Victim Compensation Program, 47.5% for OVC's Victim Assistance Program, and 5% for the OVC Director to distribute in competitive-discretionary awards in certain statutorily defined categories. Generally, under the distribution rules for the Victim Compensation Program, if a portion of the 47.5% available for Compensation is not needed for that purpose ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> it is greater than the sum of the statutorily allocated grant amounts for the eligible State victim compensation programs for that year), it is (per the statutory formula) made available to augment the Victim Assistance Program. The Victim Assistance Program distributes funds to States as mandated by VOCA, at 34 U.S.C. 20103(a) and (b). Under 34 U.S.C. 20102, the Director of OVC is required to make an annual grant to eligible crime victim compensation programs that is equal to 75 percent of the amount awarded by the State program to victims of crime from State funds during the fiscal year preceding the year of deposits in the Fund (two fisc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 100k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━