Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) today announced the fiscal year 2015 CJS spending bill includes $430 million for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). This is the highest funding level for OVW programs. The overall CJS spending bill provides a total of $28 billion to the Department of Justice to fight crime and terrorism, and protect communities and families.
The CJS spending bill funds multiple competitive and formula grant programs that support training for police officers and prosecutors; state domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions; rape prevention programs; lethality assessment and homicide reduction initiatives; national domestic violence hotlines; battered women’s shelters and transitional housing support services; help for teens and young adults caught in abusive relationships; victims of child abuse; and funding for counselors of rape victims during trials.
Domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking are crimes of epidemic proportions, exacting terrible costs on individual lives and our communities. Twenty-five percent of U.S. women report that they have been physically assaulted by an intimate partner during their lifetimes, 1 in 6 have been the victims of rape or attempted rape, and the cost of domestic violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year.
Within OVW, $12 million is provided for colleges and universities to address sexual assault on campus from updating school policies to providing improved counseling and crisis services to victims. The CJS spending bill also includes funding of $41 million for a new competitive grant program to support multi-disciplinary community response teams tasked with developing and implementing comprehensive reform regarding sexual assault, including reducing the backlog of sexual assault kits at law enforcement agencies. Once a backlog is acknowledged and kits begin to be tested, communities are still left to grapple with the enormous task of not just finding a way to test all of their backlogged kits, but also investigating and prosecuting these cases, reengaging victims in the process, and addressing any systemic failures that led to the creation of the backlog in the first place.
In the next step of the appropriations process, the bill will be considered by the full Senate.
