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.
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.
We will continue to monitor this indicator and engage with our minority communities to enhance trust and cooperation.
As stated previously, we are reviewing our data collection practices for victim race/ethnicity data reliability. It should be noted that accurately identifying and collecting the race and ethnicity of crime victims is easier than with criminal defendants because the prosecution is not legally prohibited from direct contact with crime victims.
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.
Because of the private and secretive nature of these crimes, there is often little to no corroborative evidence available to help meet our burden of proof. It is common for the victims of these crimes to delay reporting for extended periods causing the loss of crucial evidence. Our office takes a victim centered approach to our cases. This is especially true for these types of cases. We must not only weigh the strength of the evidence and the risks of going to trial, we consider a victim's ability and desire to participate in the proceedings and their individual goals and desires. These factors impact our ability to obtain convictions in sex assault cases.
Our office takes a victim centered approach to prosecution. This includes reaching out to our victims in a timely fashion. This indicator shows that, on average, it takes us less than a week to contact VRA crime victims after filing charges. This is one of the lowest rates in the state.
Notes:
- Underlying data counts for each chart can be accessed through this link.