Loss of Victim Services Funding Leaves Wisconsin Agencies Scrambling

Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations across Wisconsin are bracing for massive cuts to their budgets because Wisconsin’s allocation from a federal program has dropped from $40 million to $13 million.

The cuts caused the state Department of Justice (DOJ) to limit grants available to community based organizations and government agencies such as victim-witness departments within county district attorney’s offices. Organizations were only allowed to request just $250,000 this year.

That cap caused some organizations to receive far less federal money than in past years. Stevens Point-based CAP Services, Inc. saw its VOCA allocation drop from $985,895 last year to $98,219.

Data from the DOJ shows that on average, organizations received about $250,000 less money through VOCA than they did last year. But because the DOJ imposed the cap on grant requests as a way to make sure the money available got spread as fairly as possible, that decline doesn’t show how organizations may have limited their requests when they actually needed far more.

The Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) takes fees, fines and penalties collected in federal court proceedings and disburses those funds to the states to use on victim services — which can include the operations of community-based organizations such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers and the work of victim-witness offices within county district attorneys’ offices.

These organizations and offices play a crucial role in the criminal justice system. Their work can include finding housing, clothes and food for survivors and their children, providing transportation to and from court appearances and helping people prepare for and understand the often confusing process of criminal court proceedings. The work is also often a matter of life and death in cases that can include helping victims of domestic violence safely leave home.

Staff at these organizations also help victims process the trauma they’ve experienced and how that’s affected by the criminal justice process, which by definition requires them to relive it in court.

The cuts will have ripple effects across communities, said Shira Phelps, the executive director of DOJ’s Office of Crime Victim Services, calling the downsizing of victims’ services a “drastic loss.”

“Victim services is not just about one person gets hurt and experiences trauma, and then they’re helped and they go on with their lives,” Phelps added. “This is really about sort of taking away a foundation for communities that help in every other aspect. Housing, education, all of those different fields are going to feel this really deep impact.”

Since 2000, Congress has put a cap on the amount of money that can be disbursed to states from the fund, which is operated by the U.S. Treasury Department, calculated by a three-year average of court fees, fines and penalties. That number has dropped over the past six years and in March, Congress approved setting the cap at $1.2 billion, a 40% drop from the 2023 fiscal year when the cap was $1.9 billion and a massive decline from 2018 when the cap hit an all-time high of $4.4 billion.

In 2021, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin was a co-author of a bill that passed on a bipartisan basis to sustain the fund, adding an additional $1 billion to the fund between 2021 and 2023. But last year, as the cap was set to drop, Baldwin warned a fix would be needed as Wisconsin faced an increase in domestic violence deaths.

“Organizations across Wisconsin rely on this funding to provide support to victims of crime, including victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Sadly, Wisconsin continues to suffer from an epidemic of domestic violence, and these funds are vital to assist the adults and children harmed by these crimes,” Baldwin wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland last October. “The Department must do everything in its power to ensure that these organizations and the victims they serve have the resources they need.”

For the past few years, Wisconsin has been able to put a Band-aid over the cuts with money from COVID-19 relief funds, but with those funds running out, organizations across the state are preparing for a sudden hit. In its request for the 2025-26 budget, DOJ has asked for money to fill the gap. In the meantime, organizations will struggle to provide the services they can.

The loss of funds comes as domestic violence continues to be a major problem in Wisconsin. The state ranks eighth in the nation for the number of women killed by men, and a 2022 report found that domestic violence deaths in Wisconsin were on the rise.

Domestic violence homicide is the most predictable type of homicide, said Courtney Olson, executive director of Rainbow House Domestic Abuse Services, Inc in northeastern Wisconsin. She believes it’s one of the most preventable.

Olson said friends and family members of victims often feel frustrated, wondering why their best friend, sister, daughter or mom doesn’t leave an abusive relationship. She said on average, it takes seven incidents of abuse before someone is out the door for good, and leaving is the most dangerous time for victims. Having help from a professional is critical, she said.

“It’s lifesaving work,” Olson said.

Service cuts

The loss of services will be most stark in more rural parts of the state, where local and county governments have less capacity to help with the lost funds and there are fewer private funds available.

Embrace, a non-profit, with headquarters in Ladysmith, Rusk County, has been in existence since 1980, offering shelter and services to survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

It serves four, rural counties in northwest Wisconsin – Barron, Price, Rusk and Washburn.

Embrace is scheduled to face a $531,581 cut of VOCA funds – from $650,000 to $118,419 – that Executive Director Katie Bement said represents about one third of the organization’s budget.

“I’m in shock and don’t even know what to say because it’s just creating such panic ... knowing that there are all these life-saving services statewide being impacted,” said Bement. “It’s not just Embrace that’s experiencing this. People are going to lose access to child abuse services, domestic violence and sexual assault and trafficking (services) and other victim services because of this loss of funding.”

In the spring of 2023, Bement was first informed there would be a cut of the VOCA funds but the estimate was around $400,000 – a significant hit for the organization. Then, in early September this year she learned it would be even deeper – $531,581.

“It was so much worse than we thought,” she said.

Anticipating a $400,000 hit, Embrace changed how it operates its emergency shelter available 24/7 for the last 30 years by removing a staff person from the premises.

“We've always had staff on-site in our emergency shelter who were able to be called out to accompany somebody to a hospital or respond to folks that were staying in shelter,” she said, “and with the original notice of the funding loss coming through, we restructured all of that, so now nobody (no staff person) is physically on site at the shelter anymore.”

With the $531,581 cut, Embrace has had to cut even more services, including sexual assault services for survivors, as well as laying off staff and reducing services to the schools in the four counties.

“There are going to be people out there who die without these services available,” she said. “It’s going to be slower to get services because there’s less staff. I think it’s very unlikely people will be able to get same-day services unless there’s a high risk of homicide.”

She added, “The people who are going to be hurt the most are the folks who are already most harmed and marginalized – QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color) survivors and rural, low-income survivors.”

Bement said small, rural non-profits like Embrace are feeling the cuts the most because they don’t have private foundations to turn to for funds and the local county government funding is limited: Washburn gives $17,000; Rusk, $12,000 and Price, $2,000.

Barron County used to give Embrace $25,000 a year but after it paid for a Black Lives Matter billboard in the county in 2020 the county supervisors responded negatively and cut all funding.

Earlier in the year, the state Legislature approved some backfill dollars in Act 241 that gave Embrace $271,000 to fund the group’s work through 2024 and into June 2025, but this leaves it nearly $300,000 short and the Act 241 funds are just for one year.

“We can’t really hire anyone because we don’t know if there will be any dollars for next year,” Bement said.

Seven organizations in northeast Wisconsin are seeking donations in the face of looming funding cuts that threaten the current level of services for victims of crimes.

“There’s just really nothing to trim, and that is the story you’re going to hear from every agency,” Tana Koss, vice president of programs and strategy at Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin, said about her organization. “We’re already as efficient as we can be.”

Member organizations are collecting donations for the North Eastern WI (N.E.W.) Victim Service Collaborative Fund. The fund’s webpage says that as of Oct. 1, the region will lose almost $1.8 million each year — over $5 million over the grant cycle. The goal is to raise $3 million in 3 years.

Family Services of Northeast Wisconsin is losing about $690,000 of VOCA funding. Koss said her organization has been going after any potential grant funding, but a gap remains. The gap is down to $365,000 for the coming year, she said. That’s “basically a thousand dollars a day we need to find” to maintain sexual assault core services, Koss said.

“That advocacy support, having someone that you feel really comfortable with, is critical,” Koss said. “And it’s critical not just for that human’s experience, but for the justice system to work. Keeping a person who’s been victimized in this way engaged in the legal process to hold the perpetrators accountable — that’s a long road.”

Koss said barrier-free counseling has been part of the organization’s VOCA-funded effort for over 40 years. It had to be cut completely out of the grant, and the group hasn’t yet found new funding to keep it going. The family services organization has found funding for its child advocacy center for this year.

Koss said the organization hasn’t made staff cuts to sexual assault services, but the $365,000 gap remains for the fiscal year running from 2024 into 2025. In 2025-2026, the shortfall will be $950,000.

“I feel like it is impossible to cut from a team of 10 that’s doing 24/7 in four counties,” Koss said. “Half of the victims we’re serving are children. And 90% of those children know their abuser. So how can we not be responding? Like, we have to figure it out. To me, it’s like, failure is not an option.”

The VOCA reductions will give $351,000 less to the Violence Intervention Project, Inc, which serves Kewaunee County. The organization has had to cut essentially four positions from its staff of nine, executive director Laura Giddley said. A concern for her is staff burnout. She also said the cut may decrease the organization’s outreach and prevention education.

“So it will be impactful within our community, and most importantly, getting resources out to the individuals in our community,” Giddley said.

Koss said multiple agencies help youth hear about safety and relationships, and how to tell an adult if something wrong is happening. She said the agencies are organized and provide experts from multiple points of view, and if any one agency loses funding, it affects the whole.

While rural parts of the state will be the first to see drastic changes such as cuts to service, eventually the ripple effect will harm the whole system.

In Dane County, Domestic Abuse Intervention Services (DAIS) operates a domestic violence shelter, 24-hour hotline and provides numerous services for victims in the county. For now, because of the availability of private dollars in Madison, funds from city and county government and long-term planning, the organization can cover the loss in VOCA funds through measures such as deferring maintenance projects. But that safety net won’t last forever.

“As other programs around the state and in the region close or are profoundly impacted by these cuts, those victims and survivors are going to come to organizations that do remain, such as DAIS or other larger programs,” DAIS executive director Shannon Barry said. “Dane County is already the fastest growing county in the entire state of Wisconsin. We’ve already seen the impact of that growth on demand for our services, and we already have waitlists for some of our services; most notably our homicide prevention shelter – the only one in Dane County.

Cuts in other parts of the state could increase the number of people DAIS needs to help because the organization is prohibited by law from denying service based on geography.

“We have to be available to anyone who comes to us,” Barry said. “Our capacity is not infinite — these cuts to programs across the state create an even bigger burden on the organizations that remains when we’re already stretched to the limit.”

Effect on DA’s offices

Some district attorneys’ offices in Wisconsin will also be receiving less VOCA funding. In Milwaukee County, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern is concerned about how the loss of funding may affect the office’s prosecution of crimes. The DA’s office will receive about $334,000 less in VOCA funding than it currently does, according to the Wisconsin DOJ.

VOCA money for the DA’s office funds victim witness advocates, Lovern said. These advocates’ main job is to stay in close contact with victims and witnesses. They give advice, reach out to victims and witnesses and accompany them to court. They also work to make sure the DA’s office is gathering enough information from victims to help determine the right charging decision for a crime.

Going forward, the DA will have two VOCA-funded victim witness advocates instead of eight, Lovern said. The county agreed to provide another four advocates in this year’s budget.

The work of victim witness offices has also become more expensive in recent years because of the 2020 passage of Marsy’s Law, amending the state constitution to give more rights to crime victims. The changes added more responsibilities to the work of these offices without adding any more funding.

The loss of VOCA money is also coming at a time of increasing caseloads, Lovern said.

“We’re charging more cases over the last two years than in previous years, so the caseloads are already growing,” Lovern said. “And this adds just additional work to our staff, many of whom have indicated to us they’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the additional caseload burden.”

Outagamie County District Attorney Mindy Tempelis said it’s still unclear how the cuts will affect the state, but she’s worried about how an already under-funded aspect of the system can manage and what that will mean for providing people what they need during traumatic times.

“There's a lot of victims of crime who really need the support of government services like the victim witness program and community based organizations that help them,” Tempelis said. “And when those are impacted, that impacts victims’ ability to process what happened to them, be able to get the care that they need to be healthy and to continue to move forward into a survivorship position”

For survivors of crimes, the cuts could “erode trust” in the criminal justice system, according to Erin Welsh, deputy director of the DOJ crime victim services office.

“I think for survivors, it really has the potential to erode trust in the system,” she said. “‘You know, I thought I was going to have these rights, I thought I was going to have these services, and you are not able to give them to me.’ And that's unreasonable for asking folks in the criminal justice system to do that with nothing, and that's entirely unfair to just leave survivors hanging and expect to get something from the criminal justice process. So I think that trust that it erodes has a real impact in how communities engage with the criminal justice system.”

One of the biggest fears about the cuts is that if people lose trust in the criminal justice system because it doesn’t support victims of domestic and sexual violence, these already underreported crimes will be less likely to be reported.

“I don't think it is possible to overstate how this will impact [reporting of crimes],” Phelps said. “The trust in the system is hard anyway, and if we are not even able to uphold and protect their rights under the constitution, under statute, why in the world would anybody put themselves out there, put their trauma out there, put their the worst thing that ever happened to them out in public if they don't even believe that their rights will be protected at a bare minimum, let alone all the other critical resources and services that are provided? If we can't even ensure that — there's no reason anyone would trust us.”

Loss of federal victim services funding leaves Wisconsin agencies scrambling was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.