Hidden Victims: Providing and Accessing Victim Services for Young Men of Color

The National Field-Generated Training, Technical Assistance, and Demonstration Projects Program addresses demonstrated gaps in training or technical assistance or in the knowledge base of victim service practitioners nationwide. The aim of the program is to enhance the provision of services and support to crime victims to further ensure that all victims are afforded the rights to which they are due. All initiatives are national in scope and focus on improving the capacity of victim service providers and allied practitioners in advancing rights and services for crime victims in the areas of child pornography; drunk and impaired driving; mortgage fraud; sexual assault within correctional settings; coordinated state-tribal crime victim services; long-term mental health and other consequences of mass violence; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer/questioning (LGBTQ) crime victims access to mainstream victim services; services for young male victims of color; or using technology to improve and enhance victim services.

The Center for Court Innovation at the Fund for the City of New York will utilize its award to fund the Save Our Streets (SOS) Crown Heights Program, an established violence-interrupter program aimed at reducing shootings and killings in this Brooklyn community, as a demonstration project to inform the creation of best practices and a national model for the provision of victim services to young men of color. The Center will enhance the SOS Crown Heights violence-interrupter program model by including a victim service infrastructure in the program's case management services that addresses young men of color that are victims of crime, along with their families. Through the use of this approach, the Center will develop protocols between SOS and victim service agencies, implement on-site, culturally competent victim services and support groups for young men of color and their families, provide training on victimization for SOS staff, and create best practice documents and toolkits for violence interrupter projects interested in replicating this effort.

ca/ncf