CT Nonprofits Serving Crime Victims Face Deep Funding Cuts
Connecticut nonprofits supporting crime victims face a 50% funding cut as the federal Crime Victims Fund shrinks from $30M to $15M annually.
Federal money flowing to Connecticut nonprofits that serve crime victims is shrinking fast, and organizations supporting abused children and survivors of sexual violence are now scrambling to fill gaps that will only grow wider next year.
The cuts trace back to the Crime Victims Fund, a federal program created through the 1984 Victims of Crime Act. The fund collects penalties and fines from federal criminal convictions rather than drawing on congressional appropriations, which means its balance rises and falls with enforcement activity. It rose dramatically to a peak of $13.1 billion in 2017, then dropped to $3.3 billion in 2024. Ongoing lawsuits involving large financial penalties have put 60% of the fund’s current balance in limbo, according to an October 2024 memo from the Connecticut Judicial Branch’s Office of Victim Services.
Connecticut nonprofits didn’t feel the full force of that decline right away. From 2022 through 2025, state lawmakers used federal coronavirus relief dollars to prop up grant levels, keeping funding relatively stable for organizations that rely on the program. That cushion is gone.
Marc Pelka, deputy director of the Office of Victim Services, said the Judicial Branch went from distributing $30 million annually between 2022 and 2025 to $21 million this year. Next year, distributions drop further to $15.1 million. That’s a roughly 50% reduction in three years, hitting organizations that already run lean.
CASA feels the cut
Connecticut CASA is one of them. The nonprofit, whose name stands for Court Appointed Special Advocates, trains volunteers to visit a single child or set of siblings every month for at least 18 months. The model is simple: give an abused or neglected child one consistent adult voice in a court system where social workers and attorneys carry overwhelming caseloads.
Josiah Brown, executive director of Connecticut CASA, said the organization had received $142,000 annually in VOCA funds since 2022, when it operated with three staff members in two courts. It has since expanded to five full-time and one part-time staff member working across seven courts, and it wants to hire one more person to support volunteers.
The funding didn’t grow with it.
This year, CASA received $104,000. Next year, Brown said, that figure is expected to drop to roughly $82,000, leaving the organization with a shortfall of about $60,000.
“While we really appreciate the VOCA funding we receive, it’s really important. It’s now covering a small fraction of our program staff and it’s not covering any of our other expenses,” Brown told CT Mirror.
Brown said CASA doesn’t plan to cut staff and expects to close the $60,000 gap through other fundraising. But the larger trend worries him. He said the organization expected to be “flat-funded at most” this year and instead took a 25% cut at the exact moment it was trying to scale up.
Why this matters beyond the numbers
For Connecticut’s Gold Coast communities, this might feel like an abstract budget story. It isn’t. CASA operates in courts across the state, including in Fairfield County, where family courts handle cases involving children from every income level. The volunteers it deploys aren’t just feel-good additions to the system. They’re often the only people with enough time to actually know a child’s circumstances, and judges rely on their reports when making placement decisions.
The Office of Victim Services at the Connecticut Judicial Branch distributes the federal VOCA grant to dozens of organizations serving survivors of sexual violence, human trafficking, child sex abuse, and gun violence statewide. When that pool shrinks by nearly half, service providers across multiple categories lose funding simultaneously.
The Crime Victims Fund’s structural problem isn’t new. Researchers and victim-service advocates have argued for years that tying the fund to federal conviction penalties creates volatility that’s incompatible with the steady, long-term work of trauma recovery. Congress has taken up proposals to stabilize the fund through direct appropriations, but none have passed into law.
For now, Connecticut nonprofits are entering the next budget cycle facing deeper cuts with no clear replacement revenue in sight. Brown said CASA will adapt, but he acknowledged that smaller organizations without its fundraising capacity may not have the same options. The Office of Victim Services distributes funds through the Connecticut Judicial Branch’s grant process, and the next allocation cycle will test how many providers can absorb another round of reductions.