Victims of Crime Act and Crime Victims Fund

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The Victims of Crime Act of 1984 is an act of the authorities of the USA, which is addressed to support the victims of offenses against the law by methods that does not include the penalty for the lawbreaker. Thus, a Crime Victims Fund had been instituted as a system to refund the victims of offenses against the law. The Crime Victims Fund is sponsored by amends and penalties that are taken from convicts and lawbreakers, not from taxes. According to the researches, by the autumn of 2013 the Crime Victims Fund had little less than 9 billion dollars on its account. Various gifts, contributions, donations and endowments are registered as the federal incomes that had been invested in the Fund, as it was allowed by an amendment to the Victims of Crime Act in 2001 through the USA Patriot Act. As a result, more than three hundred thousand dollars have been invested in the Fund through this amendment from the moment of its effect in 2002 to 2013 (Victims of Crime Act, 2005).

Moreover, after establishing the Fund in 1984, the cap regarding an overall sum of deposits had been placed for the first eight years. In this time period, the maximum level of deposits for one year diverged from a hundred million dollars to a hundred and a half million dollars. Nevertheless, the cap was lifted in 1993; thus allowing the money from every criminal amends, assignment of fee and renounced bail bond to finance the actions of the crime victim affairs.

In 2000, the Congress was forced to place another cap on stock accessible due to abundant variations in deposits. The new yearly caps were established with an intention to declare the Crime Victims Fund as a lasting and solid source of subsidy for potential victim services. Due to new amendments, the maximum annual deposit diverged from five hundred million dollars to seven hundred million dollars from 2000 to 2012. After the amendment of 2013, the cap was raised to seven hundred thirty million dollars.

The intention of compensating the victims of offenses against the law firstly came to the Margery Fry at the beginning of the 1950s who was a penal reformer at a time. The idea initially was fulfilled in New Zealand in 1963. By 1979, the United States had nearly twenty-eight compensation bills. There are several sources of the fund that sponsor the crime victims: Victim Assistance Grant Formula, Reserve Fund, Grant Period, Grant Deobligations. The Victims of Crime Act of 1984 was voted more than once; moreover, it had undergone through various legislative changes (Young & Stein, 2004).

The Task Force of the President conducted six conferences throughout the territory of the country before creating and introducing the Final Report that contained sixty-eight recommendations towards improving the support of victims of law offenders. As a result, the Final Report of the Task Force commenced four decisive initiatives. Firstly, it advised the federal law of a government to provide money for two programs: the state project of compensating the victims and the regional project of the assistance of the victims. These endorsements were established as the accelerative strength for the legislation of the Victims of Crime Act. Moreover, the establishing of the Act resulted in creating the Crime Victims Fund, enacting several civil, criminal fines, penalties and particular assignments of a fee as the means of the established programs.