October 21, 2013 Ms.

Toni Thomas State Compensation and Assistance Division Office for Victims of Crime Office of Justice Programs 810 7th Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20531 Re: OJP Docket No. 1523 Proposed Regulations; Victims of Crime Act Victim Assistance Program Dear Toni: The National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators (NAVAA) represents the state agencies that administer the VOCA victim assistance formula grants. Not only are the members of our Association responsible for the administration and implementation of VOCA assistance programs within their respective jurisdictions, but they also have a wide range of experience in managing many other State and Federal victim assistance and criminal justice programs. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to submit our comments on these proposed regulations and the efforts which OVC and its staff have made to understand the needs of crime victims who depend upon the services supported by VOCA victim assistance funding. These comments reflect the views of the NAVAA Board following considerable discussion and feedback from our members (many of whom solicited input from their VOCA subgrantees). Thus, these comprehensive comments reflect the best judgment of VOCA assistance administrators with long experience upon whom the success of the VOCA victim assistance program depends. As those who will be responsible for understanding, implementing and complying with these regulations, we wish to help make these regulations as clear, straight-forward and understandable as possible. Our goal and intent is to help OVC improve the VOCA victim assistance program in order to make it more manageable, effective and productive in serving crime victims. Crime victim assistance program The VOCA statute spells out the specific eligibility requirements for a crime victim assistance program to receive VOCA victim assistance funding. Other than saying an eligible crime victim assistance program shall expend VOCA funds only for providing services to victims of crime, the VOCA statute itself is silent about exactly how an eligible VOCA sub-recipient may or should spend VOCA funds. OVC has long defined the specific subrecipient activities and uses of the VOCA funds (and associated match) as the VOCA project. However, as used in the proposed regulations, the term crime victim assistance program sometimes refers to the agency, organization or entity eligible to be awarded VOCA funds and sometimes refers to the specific uses of VOCA funds (the VOCA project). Thus, use of the term program in the regulations is confusing and may lead to misapplication or misinterpretation of the regulations. For example, under the VOCA statute and (current Guidelines), the use of volunteers is a requirement for an agency to be eligible to receive VOCA funds, but the use of volunteers is not a required element of the VOCA project itself (although projects may choose to use volunteers). Under the proposed
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Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 2 regulations, however, it seems that using volunteers is both an eligibility requirement (see 94.104(g) Mandated use of volunteers; waiver) and a VOCA project requirement (see 94.115 Sub-recipient program requirements, which says that sub-recipients shall adhere to the following rules in using VOCA funds: including (a) Use of volunteers). The proposed regulations thus create a new, nonstatutory requirement on VOCA projects that could very well impede the provision of victim services. To illustrate: a YWCA operates a domestic violence program that includes a shelter, a crisis hotline, and legal advocacy. The YWCA applies for a VOCA subgrant to hire a legal advocate. The YWCA would meet the statutory eligibility requirement because it uses volunteers to staff its hotline. However, under the proposed regulations, it would now also be required to use volunteers in providing legal advocacy, since, pursuant to 94.115, that is how they will be using VOCA funds. In order to help clarify the application of the regulations, we suggest that they clearly delineate between 1) the statutory requirements for an agency to be eligible to receive VOCA assistance funds and 2) the requirements applicable to the specific VOCA project to be implemented by an eligible sub-recipient. This leads to two recommendations: 1. The following definitions should be added in 94.102: a. Sub-recipient means an agency, organization or other entity that is eligible to receive VOCA assistance funds under this subpart. b. VOCA project means the activities and uses supported by VOCA assistance funds subawarded under this subpart and any associated match. These terms should then replace program or crime victim assistance program as appropriate throughout the regulations. 2. Reorganize the relevant provisions of the regulations so that: a. The section entitled State Administering Agency Program Requirements contains only those requirements directly applicable to the State grantee; b. Those provisions relating to a sub-recipients statutory eligibility requirements now contained in 94.104 be removed from the State Administering Agency Program Requirements sections and placed in a new Crime Victim Assistance Sub-recipient Eligibility Requirements section 1; and c. Move the provisions relating specifically to the VOCA project to a new VOCA project program requirements section. An outline suggesting how to reorganize the proposed regulations is appended to these comments. We believe these general suggestions will carry forward OVCs intent to reorganize related concepts and rules together more logically, use consistent terminology throughout the regulations and will eliminate several repetitious provisions.
1

In addition, we recommend that this new section include all statutory eligibility requirements, including those promoting coordinated efforts to assist crime victims, assisting victim in seeking crime victim compensation benefits and nondiscrimination against victims who disagree with a States prosecution. While we understand that OVC believes the regulations should be read in conjunction with the statute, including these few additional statutory requirements will make the regulations a much more useable reference for SAAs and sub-recipients by not having to refer back and forth between two separate authorities.

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 3

The remainder of these comments is in the same order in which the relevant provisions are treated in the proposed regulations (although we recommend reorganizing where some of these provisions should appear in the final regulations). 94.102 Definitions. Crime victim or victim of crime We strongly support retention of this broad definition which appropriately reflects the fact that crime can have pervasive impact on a wide and diverse range of individuals. We are especially mindful that crime, and especially violent crime, affects not only those directly subject to the criminal act, but can pose significant emotional and other consequences to family members, friends and others, including those, such as children and others, who may witness or otherwise be innocently exposed to violent crime and for which services supported by VOCA assistance funds is appropriate (e.g. crisis response and follow-up services to those who witnessed or were in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center or Pentagon during the attacks on September 11, 2001). Spousal Abuse We agree that this term which is used in the VOCA statute is an antiquated term that should be applied broadly to include all forms of domestic or intimate partner violence. However, we believe it would be more understandable and consistent with common usage to define domestic violence to encompass the term spousal abuse as used in the VOCA statute and to replace the term spousal abuse in the regulations with the term domestic violence. Child Abuse We concur with OVCs intent that child abuse should be construed broadly to encompass a wide range of harm to children. The proposed definition goes beyond a jurisdictions law, by recommending additional instances of child abuse some of which may, in its practical application, cause confusion. For example, the proposed definition would include victims of pornography but does not specify whether these victims are children or adults at the time they receive VOCA funded services. 2 Adding to the potential confusion, 94.105(b) specifically enumerates adult survivors of child pornography as a previously underserved population. Using these definitions, should adult survivors of child pornography be considered victims of child abuse or as previously underserved? (See also our comments regarding 94.105.) OVC currently considers adults molested as children as victims of a separate and distinct type of crime and not as child abuse victims. Under the proposed definition, how then should adult survivors of child pornography be counted for meeting the subawards allocation requirement under 94.105, and for completing the reports required under 94.106 (a) and (b)? Given the broad definition of crime victim, a victim of child pornography, could receive VOCA funded services regardless of the victims age. State VOCA assistance administrators are well aware of the need to serve all forms of child abuse, and we therefore believe this definition, while well-intended, may not be needed and, at the least, should be clarified. State Administering Agency Program Requirements 94.103 Purpose of State-level VOCA funding; State administering agency eligibility.
2

The same questions arise with respect to other situations, such as victims of child abuse who many yearsperhaps as many as 20 or 30 yearslater require counseling and support services when their offender is subject to sexual predator civil commitment proceedings.

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 4 (a) Direct Services. This provision seems to suggest there are three distinct categories for the use of VOCA funds: 1. Subawards to eligible crime victim assistance programs; 2. State training or administrative costs; and 3. the States own direct service programs. As noted later, it is unclear whether a States own direct service program is to be treated the same as a subaward to any other eligible program or as something else. (c) Pass-through administration. This provision recognizes that States may use pass-through entities to help determine and administer funding. As such, the pass-through entity is not providing direct victim services and is not, for this purpose, receiving a subaward. Presumably, the State could use a portion of its 5 percent administrative funds to reimburse the pass-through entity for its costs in helping to administer the funding. We therefore do not understand the warning that States using a pass-through mechanism shall ensure that such a mechanism does not bypass the statutory limitation on use of administrative and training funds. 94.104 Eligible crime victim assistance programs. As noted earlier, we believe these provisions section should be taken out of the State Administering Agency Program Requirements section and reorganized as suggested in the appendix to these comments. State Discretion. Regardless of its location, we recommend adding an explicit provision similar to the current VOCA assistance Guidelines regarding State discretion to make subawards: States have sole discretion for determining which organizations will receive funds, and in what amounts, as long as the recipients meet the requirements of VOCA and the Program Guidelines. This is necessary to ensure that neither OVC nor any other external authority will be able to mandate that a specific subgrant or amount be awarded. 94.105 Allocation of subawards (c) Previously underserved category (ten percent total) The provision that VOCA funds be available to programs that serve previously underserved populations of victims of violent crime was added to the VOCA statute to ensure that a minimal level of funding was made available to assist victims of crimes other than the three priority categories. The current VOCA assistance Guidelines recognizes this by excluding the priority categories from also being considered a previously underserved category. However, the proposed regulations blurs this distinction by requiring States to identify previously underserved populations by both the type of crime and victim characteristics, yet does not explicitly exclude the priority victim categories. This can easily lead to double-counting some victim populations as being both a priority category and a previously underserved category. For example, child victims of pornography, child victims of trafficking, rural victims of sexual assault or elder domestic violence victims could each be counted under both a priority and the previously underserved categories. We believe this is contrary to the intent of the statutory previously underserved requirement and recommend that victims of priority categories be excluded as a previously underserved population. (d) Exceptions to required allocations. The regulations allow for an exception to the minimum required allocations based upon a demonstration that a smaller amount or no assistance is needed. While this might make sense for the priority categories, it does not for the previously underserved category. Since States have wide discretion in identifying which victim

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 5 populations will be treated as previously underserved, it would be inconsistent for a State to identify a specific population as being underserved, and at the same time maintain they do not need assistance. In such a situation, the State should simply select a different underserved population to meet the 10 percent requirement. (e) Mandate to compete funding to sub-recipients. Although the section title says, mandate, the proposed regulations provide that subawards should (rather than must) be re-competed at least every five years. Unlike many contemporary federal criminal justice grant programs that provided start-up or seed funding, VOCA was enacted to ensure that local victim service programs have a stable, ongoing source of support and would not have to struggle year after year to keep going. The commentary says that this is an important new requirement that will support innovation at the direct service level through regular review of approaches to assistance services. We are unaware of any evidence that necessarily supports this conclusion. (Indeed, there is anecdotal evidence that the opposite could be true.) Neither the VOCA statute nor any other federal authority we are aware of mandates that subawards (unlike procurements) must be subjected to a competitive process. Although many, indeed most, States choose to use a competitive process to award its subgrants, some States use a non-competitive process for certain types of victim services for which there are no other options, such as prosecutor based victimwitness assistance programs. Other States have developed allocation formulas that best meet the needs in their jurisdiction, which provides an equitable distribution of funds, which ensures compliance with VOCA allocation requirements and upon which local victim services have long depended. Some local governmental bodies have rejected VOCA victim assistance funding because of their fear that federal funding would be temporarya problem only exacerbate by a competition mandate. We therefore recommend deleting this new mandate because it would introduce an element of uncertainty and jeopardize the stability and permanency of some essential programs. Should a competition requirement be retained, we believe that States be allowed flexibility to utilize alternative approaches. 94.106 Reporting Requirements (b) Performance report. The regulations require the Performance Report to cover the previous Federal fiscal years active grants. We are aware that OVC is in the process of re-examining and re-designing its data collection policies and instruments and therefore suggest that these regulations give the OVC Director discretion to use a different reporting period for the Performance reports. For example, the Director may decide to return to aligning the Performance report data with the grant project period rather than Federal fiscal year. That would enable OVC (and others who use this data) to, among other things, accurately track VOCA funding with victims served and services provided. 94.107 Monitoring requirements. (b) Monitoring frequency. Although the current Guidelines do not impose any specific requirements on States to monitor subawards, States have developed plans to conduct regular onsite, desk and other forms of monitoring. Most States rely upon the use of VOCA administrative funds for staff and related costs to monitor VOCA subgrants. In light of the statutory limit on State administrative funds available for staff to monitor subgrantees, a mandate to conduct onsite monitoring every two years may well be extremely burdensome and impose significant additional costs, especially for those States that have 200 or more individual subawards or that

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 6 cover large geographic areas. A possible unintended consequence of this requirement is to encourage States to award a fewer number of larger dollar amount subawards in order to minimize the additional staff/cost required to conduct on-site monitoring. This could limit access to VOCA funding for smaller, yet equally critical, victim assistance projects. Although 94.107(d) allows for alternative monitoring procedures, that provision only permits variance from (a) Monitoring plan but not to (b) Monitoring frequency and therefore does not allow for alternatives to the two-year on-site monitoring mandate. 94.108 Programmatic oversight of subawards. We believe these sections should be reorganized and, as appropriate, moved to the new suggested Sub-recipient Eligibility Requirement and VOCA Project Program Requirements sections. (d) Direct-service programs run by State administering agency (SAA). As noted above, it is unclear whether a SAAs direct-service program is to be treated the same as any other subaward (although limited in amount to ten percent of the annual VOCA grant). If so, then it is presumed the State program must comply with all of the statutory eligibility requirements and the funds can be used for the same permissible costs. What then is the meaning of the requirement that VOCA funds used under this paragraph remain subject to the rules for State administering agency use of VOCA funds for administration and training, at 42 U.S.C. 10603(b)(3), and in 94.110 through 94.113? Although the statute limits the use of administrative/training funds to five percent of the annual grant, this provision limits a SAAs direct service program to ten percent. SAAs may use their administrative and training funds for certain costs that are not permitted by subawards. Further explanation or elaboration of SAAs direct service programs would be helpful. (e) Victim service organizations located in an adjacent State. Although we realize these provisions are contained in the current Guidelines, it would be helpful to have further clarity of their application. Subparagraph (2) says that award amounts should be proportionate to the number of victims in the awarding State. It would seem that subgrant award amounts should cover the costs of serving those victims and not be proportionate to anything else. Furthermore, subparagraph (3) requires that there be an interstate agreement with the adjacent State, but does not indicate with whom in the adjacent State an agreement should be made or whether a subaward could be made so long as the awarding state has made other appropriate arrangements (e.g. through the use of special conditions) addressing monitoring, auditing Federal funds, overseeing compliance and reporting. 94.109 Sub-recipient program income We suggest this section be moved to the new VOCA Project Program Requirements. In the current Guidelines, in this section of the proposed regulations and in 94.115 (e), OVCs policy is expressed that crime victims should not be charged for VOCA-funded services. 3 This wording, however, is confusing because, in fact, charges are permissible with the approval
3

But see Department of Justice Regulations, 28 CFR 66.25(a) which says, Grantees are encouraged to earn income to defray program costs.

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 7 of the SAA and subject to program income rules. This has led to misunderstandings about the parameters of program income by SAAs, victim service providers and state crime victim compensation programs. Therefore, we suggest this be reworded in a more direct way, such as Sub-recipients may charge for VOCA-funded services only if the State administering agency gives prior authorization and subject to federal program income requirements. State Administering Agency Use of VOCA Funds for Administration and Training 94.111 Special considerations for administrative costs. (b) Baseline for administrative costs. Is the baseline to be established and documented on a onetime basis or as an amount to be determined every year for each grant? (c) Non-supplantation requirement. This provision differs from the established definition of nonsupplantation. According to the Glossary of Terms in the OJP Financial Guide, Supplanting is to deliberately reduce State or local funds because of the existence of Federal funds. (Emphasis ours). The proposed regulation creates an almost absolute standard that any decrease in a States previous financial commitment (other than for only two cited exceptions) constitutes non-supplantation and does not consider whether the decrease was deliberately because of the existence of Federal funds. Since the OJP Financial Guide applies to VOCA administrative costs, we believe it is unnecessary to include a non-supplantation provision in the regulations. 94.112 Allowable administrative costs. The current Guidelines allows a category of uses of administrative funds for activities that impact the delivery and quality of services to crime victims throughout the state which includes, among other things, f. Train managers of victim service agencies. Also falling within the current category of allowable uses of administrative funds have been statewide automated victim notification systems and support for victims rights compliance programs. It is strongly recommended that such allowable uses of administrative funds be continued. 94.113 Allowable training costs. The allowable training costs should include, but not be limited to the two enumerated examples. (a) Statewide/regional training. We recommend that such training may not shall target a diverse audience of victim service providers and allied professionals, since it should be left up to the state as to the most effective use of these funds in their states. We believe that it is essential to allow states to use these funds for training managers and Board members of victim service agencies which is currently allowable uses of state Administrative funds under the current Guidelines.

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 8 Sub-Recipient Program Requirements We believe that most of this section should be moved to a new Sub-Recipient Eligibility Requirements. This will also eliminate the duplication some of these provisions that are now in proposed 94.104. 94.115 Sub-recipient program requirements. Since this section refers to activities using VOCA funds, we assume this means the VOCA project. (a) Use of volunteers, (b) Promotion of community efforts to aid crime victims and (c) Assistance to victims in applying for compensation. As noted above, these create new, additional requirements for VOCA projects and not just as eligibility requirements of the agency to receive VOCA funds. (d) Compliance with State criteria. The proposed regulations requires sub-recipients to comply with additional State eligibility and services criteria, but omits compliance with State reporting requirements, as covered in the current VOCA Guidelines. We strongly recommend that the regulations also include compliance with additional State reporting requirements. (e) Cost of services. See comment regarding 94.109 Sub-recipient program income. This section should also be moved to a new section on VOCA Project Program Requirements. 94.116 Project match requirements. This provision should be moved to new VOCA Project Program Requirements. (b)(3) OVC-approved exceptions. The reason given in the commentary for the exceptions to the match requirement for VOCA projects in U.S. territories and possessions as well as to Native American and Alaskan Native projects is that resources in these communities are often not available for match, and therefore a match requirement is counterproductive to the goal of increasing the availability of victim services in a community. Project match is not a statutory requirement but an administrative requirement imposed by OVC. As explained in the current Guidelines, [t]he purpose of matching contributions is to increase the amount of resources available to projects supported by grant funds. If this is a reasonable expectation we believe it is just as applicable to VOCA projects in U.S. territories and Native American/Alaskan Native areas as it is in other areas. Similarly, there are other communities and projects that may have just as much difficulty in providing match as those in U.S. territories and Native American/Alaskan Native communities. We believe that whatever the rule, it should be applied uniformly. Thus, we believe that all projects should be subject to the same match requirements (if any) and that any exceptions to the match requirement be based on the same grounds (e.g. lack of access to adequate match resources). We would also recommend that OVC seriously

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 9 consider allowing match at the state level, rather on a subgrantee by subgrantee basis. This would be similar to other Federal formula grant programs, such as FVPSA and VAWA. Sub-Recipient Allowable/Unallowable Costs 94.117 Direct service costs. (a)(4) Facilitation of participation in criminal justice proceedings. We believe that this provision should be clearly extended to participation in any public proceeding arising out of the crime. This would include some that may not be strictly criminal justice proceedings, such as juvenile justice hearings, probation/parole/pardon proceedings, sexual predator civil commitment proceedings and the like. This can be accomplished by editing this to read: Facilitation of participation in criminal justice and other public proceedings arising out of the crime. (a)(5)(v) The proposed regulations says that in general legal services for divorce, child support, criminal defense and tort lawsuits are not appropriate uses of VOCA funding. It would be helpful if OVC clearly stated that such uses are, in fact, not appropriate. (a)(10) Services to incarcerated individuals. While we support the removal of the current prohibition on using VOCA funds for services to incarcerated individuals even when the service pertains to the victimization of that individual, we question whether there is a need to include an affirmative provision permitting such services. Since there is nothing in the VOCA statute itself that precludes serving incarcerated crime victims, simply removing the current prohibition would enable States to use their discretion to support these services. Our concern centers primarily on whether such an affirmative provision would make this a prison purpose under PREA thereby triggering the five percent penalty for States that are unable to certify compliance with PREA. If that were to be the interpretation (and we note there does not at this time appear to be any established definition of prison purpose) then OVCs intention that this rule does not mandate that States make funding available for services to incarcerated victims, but rather merely permits them to do so would be effectively meaningless for States that cannot certify PREA compliance since they would then either lose five percent of its grant or be mandated to use that amount for PREA purposes. We therefore recommend that the current prohibition on use of VOCA funds for incarcerated victims simply be removed without a provision affirmatively permitting it. (a)(11) Transitional housing. While we agree that transitional housing should be an allowable use of VOCA funds, we note that some transitional housing programs have a policy of charging a reasonable rent to residents. In such circumstances, any rent should be treated as program income. (a)(12) Relocation. This provision includes the mortgage assistance as an allowable VOCA cost. However, 94.120 (f) expressly disallows the use of VOCA funds for capital expenses,

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 10 including mortgage payments. It is therefore unclear what forms of mortgage assistance is contemplated under this provision. 94.118 Other costs for activities supporting direct services. With respect to (a) Coordination of activities; (e) Automated systems and technology; and (f) Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) and other similar volunteer trainings is it OVCs intention that these are allowable as part of a direct services subaward or can these be standalone activities without any VOCA funds being used for direct victim services? (d) Contract of professional services. The current Guidelines are ambiguous in prohibiting subrecipients from using a majority of VOCA funds for contracted services, which contain administrative, overhead, and other indirect costs included in the hourly or daily rate. However, it is both unrealistic and impractical to expect independent professionals to exclude any and all of their administrative, overhead or indirect costs in the hourly or daily rate charged for their services. Indeed, under 94.116(c) (2) relating to the use of volunteered professional or personal services as project match, it is permissible to use the rate of compensation that is consistent with the labor market, a rate that undoubtedly includes the professionals administrative, overhead and indirect costs. In other words, under the proposed regulations, it would be allowable to include these costs when the professional services are volunteered (or provided at a discounted rate) but not when directly contracted. We believe that SAAs should be able to approve contracts that contain a reasonable amount for such costs. 94.119 Sub-recipient administrative costs. Whereas (b) Skills training for staff allows the use of VOCA funds for training of both VOCAfunded and non-VOCA-funded service providers, (c)Training-related travel allows use of VOCA funds for training-related travel costs only for VOCA-funded direct service staff. If VOCA may be used to train non-VOCA-funded staff, it should also be allowable to pay for training-related travel for non-VOCA-funded staff. (e) Equipment and furniture. We recommend adding cellphones, tablets and other essential communications devices to the list of allowable items that may be purchased with VOCA funds. (f) Operating costs. We recommend adding the following to allowable operating costs: (10) Design and maintenance of web sites and social media; and (11) Essential communication services, including web hosts and cellphone services. 94.120 Expressly non-allowable sub-recipient costs.

Ms. Toni Thomas October 21, 2013 Page 11 (f) Capital expenses. As noted previously, there may be a discrepancy between the prohibition on mortgage payments and mortgage assistance under relocation. (l) Purchasing vehicles. The current Guidelines permit sub-recipients to use VOCA funds to purchase or lease vehicles if they can demonstrate to the state VOCA administrator that such expenditure is essential to delivering services to crime victims. We believe this standard should be retained in the proposed regulations because there are situations, especially in rural areas, where the provision of direct services is critically dependent on adequate transportation, yet leasing vehicles (even under the more stringent requirements imposed in these proposed regulations) may not be a viable option. In some cases, it may be possible for a sub-recipient to obtain a new or used vehicle at greatly reduced, though not zero, cost. Recognizing this vital need, we would further suggest that the reasonable costs of operating and maintaining such vehicles should be allowable VOCA costs. All of these should be subject to the SAA giving prior approval which would be made on a case-by-case basis. Finally, we believe there is an critical omission in the proposed regulations. The VOCA statute contains a provision relating to revealing statistical information and immunity from legal proceedings. This provision is antiquated and out-of-date with todays technology and need for confidentiality and privacy. Feedback from VOCA assistance administrators indicate a very strong desire to see adequate protections for clients personally identifiable information written into these proposed regulations, while reflecting appropriate access for law enforcement and grant monitoring purposes. Attached to these comments are suggested regulations based largely on VAWA and FVPSA statutes which we believe should be incorporated into these regulations. Thank you again for the opportunity to offer our comments and feedback on these proposed regulations. NAVAA stands ready to continue working with OVC in providing vitally needed, high quality services to all victims of crime. Sincerely,

Steve Derene Executive Director

Rob Gallup President, NAVAA Board of Directors

Suggested Reorganization Of VOCA Assistance Regulations PART 94CRIME VICTIM SERVICES Subpart BVOCA Victim Assistance Program General Provisions 94.___ Purpose; future guidance; construction and severability 94.___ Definitions State Administering Agency Program Requirements 94.___ Purpose of State-level VOCA funding; State administering agency eligibility. [move current 94.104(a) to (e), (g) and (h) Eligible crime victim assistance programs to new section 94.___ Subrecipient Eligibility Requirements move current 94.104(f) Project match requirement to new section VOCA Project Program Requirements and renumber following sections as appropriate] 94.___ Allocation of subawards. 94.___ Reporting requirements. 94.___ Monitoring requirements. 94.___ Programmatic oversight of subawards. State Administering Agency Use of VOCA Fund for Administration and Training Administration and training. Special considerations for administrative costs. Allowable administrative costs. Allowable training costs.

94.___ 94.___ 94.___ 94.___

Subrecipient Eligibility Requirements 94.___ In general. 94.___ Statutory requirements. (a) Types of entities. (b) Organizational capacity. (1) Record of effective services to victims of crime and support from non-VOCA funds. (2) Substantial financial support from non-VOCA funds. (c) Use of volunteers; waiver. (d) Community coordination. (e) Crime victim compensation assistance. (f) Disagreement with State prosecution. VOCA Project Program Requirements 94.___ Purpose of VOCA subawards. 94.___ State discretion. 94.___ VOCA project program requirements (a) Project match.(if not eliminated) (b) Cost of services Program income. (c) Compliance with State criteria. (d) Nondisclosure of Confidential or Private Information VOCA Project Allowable/Unallowable Costs 94.___ 94.___ 94.___ 94.___ Direct service costs. Other costs for activities supporting direct services. VOCA project administrative costs Expressly non-allowable VOCA project costs.

Proposed VOCA Regulation Nondisclosure of confidential or private information (A) In general In order to ensure the safety of crime victims, grantees and subrecipients under this subpart shall, to the extent permitted by law, protect the confidentiality and privacy of such victims and their families. (B) Nondisclosure Subject to subparagraphs (C), (D) and (E), grantees and subgrantees shall not (i) disclose, reveal or release any personally identifying information or individual information collected in connection with services requested, utilized or denied through grantees and subgrantees programs regardless of whether the information has been encoded, encrypted, hashed, or otherwise protected; or (ii) disclose, reveal or release individual client information without the informed, written, reasonably time-limited consent of the person (or in the case of an unemancipated minor, the minor and the parent or guardian or in the case of legal incapacity, a court-appointed guardian) about whom information is sought, whether for this program or any other Federal, State, tribal or territorial grant program, except that consent for release may not be given by an abuser of the minor incapacitated person, or the abuser of the other parent of the minor. (C) Release If release of information described in subparagraph (B) is compelled by statutory or court mandate (i) grantees and subgrantees shall make reasonable attempts to provide notice to victims affected by the disclosure of information; and (ii) grantees and subgrantees shall take steps necessary to protect the privacy and safety of the persons affected by the release of the information. (D) Information sharing Grantees and subgrantees may share (1)(i) individual or aggregate nonpersonally identifying data regarding services to their clients and nonpersonally identifying demographic information in order to comply with Federal, State, tribal or territorial grant monitoring, reporting, evaluation, or data collection requirements; (ii) court-generated information and law enforcement-generated information contained in secure, governmental registries for protection order enforcement purposes; and (iii) law enforcement- and prosecution generated information necessary for law enforcement and prosecution purposes. (2) In no circumstances may (i) Any client be required to provide a consent to release his or her personally identifying information as a condition of eligibility for the services provided by the grantee or subgrantee. (ii) Any personally identifying information be shared in order to comply with Federal, State, tribal or territorial reporting, evaluation, or data collection requirements, whether for this program or any other Federal, State, tribal or territorial program. (E) Statutorily mandated reports of abuse or neglect. Nothing in this section prohibits a grantee or subgrantee from reporting suspected abuse or neglect, as those terms are defined and specifically mandated by State, tribe or territory involved.