Frequently Asked Questions

Information about establishing community courts is available in Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) publication, What is a Community Court? How the Model is Being Adapted Across the United States. For more information on community courts, visit the Center for Court Innovation website.

To date, Crime Victims Fund (Fund) dollars have always come from individuals convicted of federal crimes, not from taxpayers. Information on the Fund is available from the Crime Victims Fund Fact Sheet from the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC). For additional information, visit the Victim Compensation section of the OVC website.

Information about drug-facilitated rape and sexual assault can be found in the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) grant reports, Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study and Estimate of the Incidence of Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault in the U.S. For additional information on this topic, please visit the Date Rape Drugs section of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website.

Contact information for the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) is available on the Contact Us section of the BJA website.

If you have a complaint regarding conditions within a federal correctional facility, please contact the facility directly with your concerns. You can conduct a search for the facility's contact information on the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Our Locations site.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) sponsored publication, Offender Race and Case Outcomes: Do Crime Seriousness and Strength of Evidence Matter? Final Activities Report, examines the effect of race on a series of case processing decisions and compares case outcomes for offenders charged with a variety of felonies.

Studies on the effectiveness of police patrols can be found on the CrimeSolutions website. Once on the site, conduct a search for the term "patrol". The CrimeSolutions site uses rigorous research to inform practitioners and policy makers about what works in criminal justice, juvenile justice, and crime victim services and includes multiple program evaluations for hot spot policing initiatives.

Additional research on targeted police patrols is available in the following resources produced or sponsored by the National Institute of Justice:

• Reducing Firearms Violence Through Directed Police Patrol: Final Report on the Evaluation of the Indianapolis Police Department's Directed Patrol Project
• Does Crime Just Move Around the Corner? A Study of Displacement and Diffusion in Jersey City, NJ
• The Kansas City Gun Experiment

For information on crime victims with disabilities, visit the Victims with Disabilities section of the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) website.

Information on the use of pepper spray by law enforcement are available in the following resources produced or sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ):

• Pepper Spray: Research Insights on Effects and Effectiveness Have Curbed Its Appeal
• Police Use of Force, Tasers and Other Less-Lethal Weapons and in the NIJ-sponsored publications:
• Deaths in Police Confrontations When Oleoresin Capsicum is Used
• Evaluation of Oleoresin Capsicum (O.C.) Use by Law Enforcement Agencies: Impact on Injuries to Officers and Suspects, Final Activity Report

Additional information is available by doing a search of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts Database/Virtual Library.

Victim compensation eligibility is determined by each State Victim Compensation Program. For additional information, visit the Victim Compensation section of the Office for Victims of Crime website.