Global Strategies for Implementation

New Directions
Five Global Challenges for the Field

More than 1,000 individuals from across the Nation contributed to the development of New Directions from the Field: Victims' Rights and Services for the 21st Century. In the course of compiling the hundreds of recommendations from the field and in listening to the voices of crime victims, their advocates, and allied professionals who work with crime victims throughout the Nation, certain key challenges emerged.

The following five guiding global challenges for responding to victims of crime form the core of the hundreds of ideas and 250 recommendations contained in New Directions.

1. To enact and enforce consistent, fundamental rights for crime victims in Federal, State, juvenile, military, and Tribal justice systems, and administrative proceedings.
   
   
2. To provide crime victims with access to comprehensive, quality services regardless of the nature of their victimization, age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, capability, or geographic location.
   
   
3. To integrate crime victims' issues into all levels of the Nation's educational system to ensure that justice and allied professionals and other service providers receive comprehensive training on victims' issues as part of their academic education and continuing training in the field.
   
   
4. To support, improve, and replicate promising practices in victims' rights and services built upon sound research, advanced technology, and multidisciplinary partnerships.
   
   
5. To ensure that the voices of crime victims play a central role in the Nation's response to violence and those victimized by crime.