NCJ Number
74900
Date Published
1975
Length
36 pages
Annotation
The Victim/Witness Assistance Project (New York) was created to provide a new range of services to victims and witnesses of crime in order to facilitate their appearance in court or to reduce the necessity of such appearances by improving criminal proceedings.
Abstract
A cooperative venture of the Kings County District Attorney's Office, the New York City Courts, the New York Police Department, and the Vera Institute of Justice, the Victim/Witness Assistance Project was funded by an LEAA grant and matching funds from the City of New York. The project's major objective is to save time for all participants in the criminal justice process (and thereby also achieve substantial cost benefits) by facilitating the appearance of victims and witnesses in court: the number of adjournments and dismissals resulting from witnesses' failure to appear will also be reduced as a result. This report covers the planning stage and the implementation of some priority components of the project, including improvements in the civilian prosecution witness notification system; the addition of a facility, staffed with bilingual interviewers, to the Brooklyn Criminal Court's Complaint Room (to ease the burden of the long waiting period and collect information relevant to this project); and the creation of a notification unit, in order to notify all prosecution witnesses of their required appearance, as well as operating an alert system to ensure that witnesses are not summoned unnecessarily. An important component of the new notification procedure is the witness roster, defining the status of civilian and police witnesses (alert, expected, not expected, or excused). Supportive services for victims and witnesses are also provided, including a victim/witness reception center (with a play center for their children) and transportation services. Tabular data and graphs are provided.