Serving Victims
This section presents information about victimization, victim characteristics, and the District Attorney’s (DA) Office’s engagement with victims, witnesses, and the general community.
Why is this important? Understanding the victim population, providing effective services, and timely engagement helps develop the mutual transparency and trust needed to advance community safety and well-being.
This office recognizes that not all individuals identify with binary male and female categories. Current data collection processes do not account for such non-binary definitions.
Important Note Regarding Victim Demographic Information: Demographic information about our victims lags far behind other areas of data collection. Our office is choosing to share this information despite several known shortcomings in data collection practices so that we can track and document improvement in these processes.
Remember: as noted at the top of this page, our case management system has a "default" value of "Another Race/Ethnicity". This value appears when no other value has been entered. As a result, it is likely dramatically over-reported in our current data.
Indicators
Below are a set of indicators that provide additional context about serving victims. These indicators help the DA's Office ensure they are supporting crime victims with timely outreach, ensuring victims' voices are heard, and preventing future victimization.
Our office strives to promptly contact victims. Given the growth of our Victim Services Unit, our office has increased the ability and staff capacity to reach out to victims sooner. Speedy contact with victims will continue to be a point of focus for our Victim Services Unit to provide the best assistance possible to victims in our community.
Our office takes a victim centered approach when prosecuting crimes under the Victim Rights Act (VRA). We work with various partners in the community to ensure that victims have options, resources, and support when navigating the criminal justice system. Some examples of partner agencies include the Latimer House and The Center (child advocacy center).
We are proud of the work of our dedicated staff and the strong partnerships that exist with local Complex Crimes Investigators in our jurisdiction. This collaboration and the work of investigators and prosecutor teams helps build cases that can stand up in court.
In criminal cases, prosecutors are required to prove each and every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt to the unanimous satisfaction of all jurors. This is the highest burden of proof in the United States judicial system.
Prosecuting violent crimes committed against children is important to our office. We are committed to working with law enforcement and other local partners, such as local child advocacy centers, to identify strategies for prevention.
Notes
- Underlying data counts for each chart can be accessed through this link.