Supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims' Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States, no matter their country of origin or their creed, and to commemorate the National Crime Victims' Rights Week theme of "Crime Victims' Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.".

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleague and friend from California (Mr. Costa) as original cosponsors of this resolution to recognize and support the mission and goals of National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

I want to thank Mr. Costa for his work on the Victims' Rights Caucus. California, from where he comes, is the State that started the victims rights movement. While Mr. Costa was in the California legislature, he presented and sponsored the Three Strikes law and also victim notification in that State. He and I are co-chairs of the Victims' Rights Caucus, and this caucus is comprised of 62 members from both sides of the aisle who are dedicated to protecting the interests and needs of crime victims in our Nation. Crime issues are not partisan issues, they are people issues. They don't recognize borders or district boundaries. They affect everybody in this country.

National Crime Victims' Rights Week began in 1980, when President Reagan first called for a national observance to recognize and honor the millions of crime victims and survivors in our country. Victims' Rights Week also pays tribute to the thousands of victim service providers and professionals who provide critical support to victims throughout our country every day. The theme of this year's National Crime Victims' Rights Week is ``Crime Victims' Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.''

Mr. Speaker, crime touches all of us and all of our friends and all of our neighbors. It happens in every State and every district. It has many forms. In 2008, 21 million crimes were committed in the United States. Of these, 5 million were violent crimes, 16 million were property crimes, and there were over 11,000 alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in 2006. In 2008, the incidence of identity fraud rose for the first time in nearly 5 years to 10 million victims here in the United States.

Crime victims are not just statistics, they are real people, real men, women and children, their families, their loved ones. What are we doing to help them? Well, we are raising awareness and highlighting issues important to victims. We are also protecting critical programs that are already in existence. Many of these programs were created by the landmark bill passed in 1984 called the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. This law created the VOCA fund. It's a novel concept where criminals who are convicted and sent to our Federal penitentiaries donate into a fund. That fund then is used for crime victims and crime- victim-related organizations throughout the United States.

This fund requires criminals to pay for the crimes they have committed. This money then pays for the rent on the courthouse, so to speak, pays for medical expenses of the victim, and sometimes it covers the victims' funeral costs. This is money that is funded solely by criminals, it is not taxpayer money, and the money should be always used for victims of crime.

VOCA is the only Federal fund that caters to the needs of victims. Each year, over 4,400 agencies, 10,000 victim assistance programs, and about 4 million victims receive support and financial compensation from this fund whose coffers are filled by criminals who are sent to our penitentiaries.

The Office of Management and Budget estimates that the Crime Victims Fund in 2011 will have $4.3 billion, with an additional $1 billion to be deposited during the year of 2011. This money is solely for the victims of crime, funded with money paid by criminals who cause criminal conduct. We should make sure that this money stays with the victims and is not taken by our Federal bureaucrats and used for other pet projects.

Mr. Speaker, crime victims are real people who have survived sometimes gruesome acts of violence. Their voices must not be excluded from our criminal justice system. The criminal justice system should be justice not only for defendants of crime, but victims of crime as well.

As we take the opportunity to honor victims and their courage and their memories, we renew our commitment to protect the rights of crime victims and provide them with effective assistance programs. We also commend the countless professionals and volunteers who have dedicated their lives to help crime victims and survivors of crime.

I urge support of this resolution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), who also, being from California, helped sponsor and did sponsor the stalking awareness law in the State of California and has brought that concept to Congress as well.

I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, during this debate, on which we agree this legislation should be passed, we have talked a lot about victims. The victims that we have talked about are more than statistics. They are real people.

Before I came to Congress, I spent over 20 years on the criminal court bench in Houston, Texas. I saw about 25,000 people come to the courthouse who were charged with the most serious crimes in our society. Along with those defendants came other people who didn't want to be at the courthouse either, but they were there because they were chosen by defendants to be prey, in many cases, and those were victims of crime. They came to the courthouse. They were all races, all ages, of both sexes, and of all philosophies, but crime does not discriminate against who the victim may be.

Before I became a judge, I was a prosecutor in Houston, Texas. I spent my last year prosecuting capital cases. In my office across the street, I have a lot of photographs of my kids, of my four kids and of my eight grandkids, but I also have two other photographs that have been in my office ever since I was at the courthouse in Houston, first as a prosecutor and then as a judge.

This is a photograph of Kevin Wanstrath. He was born the same year as my son Kurt, but Kevin didn't have the fortune of living very long. This photograph was taken just a few days before he was murdered.

Kevin didn't have a lot going for him when he was born. He was born in Biloxi, Mississippi. His mother didn't want him, so she threw him in a Dempsey Dumpster. A homeless guy found him, turned him over to Catholic charities, and he was taken care of in that orphanage. A couple in Houston, Texas, by the name of John and Diana Wanstrath, a married couple, couldn't have children. They found Kevin. They adopted him, and they made Kevin Wanstrath their child.

Unbeknownst to them, there was a relative who was plotting to kill John and Diana Wanstrath. Under Texas law, if the parents die, the child gets everything. On a summer night in Houston, Texas, two individuals posing as real estate agents came to the front door of John and Diana Wanstrath. They first shot John in the head and then shot Diana in the head. Then while Kevin Wanstrath was asleep in his baby bed and was curled up to his favorite little teddy bear--he had blue terry cloth pajamas on--he was shot in the back of the head. He was assassinated on the altar of greed.

There were four henchmen involved in that murder. It turned out that, during the trial, we proved that there was another homicide, that Diana Wanstrath's mother was also murdered by these henchmen.

That was a long time ago. Two of the killers received the death penalty. Two others went to prison for a long time. But I've always wondered what Kevin Wanstrath would turn out to be. He was 14 months old in this photograph. He didn't get to live very long, but he was a victim.

Today, we've talked about victims of crime, but they were and they are, Mr. Speaker, real people, people who just wanted to live, to grow up, to play in their backyards with their dads--things that never happened for Kevin, for a lot of other kids in our culture and for a lot of adults, too.

We as a Nation must understand that violence against people in this country has to end and that people who commit crimes against children and others, violent crimes, must be held accountable under our laws for the choices that they make. We as a society and we as a culture are not judged by the way we treat the rich, the famous, the powerful, the important, the politicians. We are judged by the way we treat the weak, the elderly, the children. That is how we are judged.

That's why this resolution and other resolutions which talk about victims are important, so I urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution and to remember that victims are people, too. And that's just the way it is.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

When we talk about the 5 million violent crimes that occur in this country every year, we should be mindful of what that means in terms of the shattered lives of the victims, those who survive and those who don't survive; their families are shattered by this experience.

I want to take a moment and recognize someone who did a lot in California to help change many of the laws in our State, and that is Colleen Thompson Campbell, who lost not only her son to violent crime, but also, in a separate case, lost her brother and sister-in-law to murder as well.

I have had the opportunity to work with Colleen over the years. She formed an organization called MOVE, Memories of Victims Everywhere. One of the concepts that she had was to try, in State law, to overturn some of the worst decisions made by the then Rose Bird Court, which we did with Proposition 115. I was the author of that legislation. We could not get that legislation to try to restore rights between the victims of crime and the accused through the State legislature, so she went out and pounded the pavement with victims' rights groups across the State. And after gaining 1 million signatures, on the third try we were able to pass it overwhelmingly in the State of California. But that proposition, the Crime Victims/Speedy Trial Initiative, gave victims the right to a speedy trial, it gave those victims an opportunity to testify, it increased sentences, it increased punishment, it required reciprocal discovery of evidence, tried to right that balance, it allowed the family members of those victims to stay in the courtroom and follow these proceedings and not be dismissed, and allowed them also to go to the sentencing. I testified before the House Constitution Subcommittee here some years later when we had an opportunity to mold legislation based on what we had done in California, the victims' rights bill that became law, codifying crime victims' rights here at the Federal level.

I would also just like to recognize another individual who was affected by crime, Kathleen Baty. She never even knew that the man stalking her really had existed when she was in high school and went to UCLA. She was running on campus, she was participating in sports. She did not know that this individual--who she had never met--had become obsessed with her and would take it upon himself over the next 10 years to follow her and stalk her relentlessly and threaten her and attempt to abduct her. It is phenomenal that it took legislation to actually prevent this crime of stalking, but that's where the concept came from, from this case and the case of four young women in my county of Orange County who all died within a span of 6 weeks. Everyone had gone to law enforcement and been told there is nothing we can do despite you being stalked until you are attacked physically. So we passed the Anti- Stalker law--with her testifying--at the State level, and later she came back here and helped us with the Federal law as well.

Why with the Federal law? Because the first thing we tell victims is to get away from your stalker. And when he gets out, or slips--as with the case of her stalker, he cut off his ankle bracelet after he was finally apprehended. By the way, he was apprehended on her doorstep after a 10-hour standoff with a knife to her throat, but he had not dragged her more than the required 1,000 feet, so it was not kidnapping.

This is why we needed the Anti-Stalker Act, why we passed it at the Federal level, why we have to be aware of the rights and the needs and the concerns of victims of crime because these are the types of laws that now we have been able to pass, as I say, in Japan and overseas as well, in Europe. But if we look at the effect on these lives--and I remember Kathleen Baty coming back here to tell me about how she was never able to shake this individual--now we have the Federal law so that if the victim crosses State lines, the perpetrator cannot cross those State lines to pursue them.

I will also mention the legislation that I authored in California to put fines on those who are convicted of crimes and fund programs in the State for victims, and we have done this at the Federal level as well.

We need to do more to right the scales of justice; we need to do more to balance the rights of crime victims; and lastly, what this particular resolution here today does, we need to do more to make the public aware of just how out of balance these scales are to the 5 million victims of crime every year in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1104) supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims' Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States, no matter their country of origin or their creed, and to commemorate the National Crime Victims' Rights Week theme of ``Crime Victims' Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.''

I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 1104 supports the goals and mission of National Crime Victims' Rights Week, celebrated this week, April 18 through 24.

This year's National Crime Victims' Rights Week theme is ``Crime Victims' Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.''

Every April individuals in communities across the country, with the support of the Department of Justice's Office of Victims of Crime, observe National Crime Victims' Rights Week. Rallies, candle-light vigils and many other commemorative events honor crime victims during this observance of victims' rights.

National Crime Victims' Rights Week is observed to highlight the special needs of more than 21 million victims of crime and survivors of crime each year, including over 5 million victims of violent crime. Although the number of murder victims in 2008 fell by almost 4 percent from the previous year, we must remain vigilant in this fight against violent crime.

During this week in April, we take time out to ensure that resources and services are available to help crime victims rebuild their lives and to acknowledge the impact of crime on individuals, families, and communities.

Crime victims suffer not only from the losses that directly result from the crime, but also from the emotional trauma of being victimized. In 2007, total economic loss to victims across the country was $2 billion for violent crime and $16 billion for property crime. This week is also a time to make a commitment to providing more resources to victims of crimes committed in the workplace, in schools, and on college campuses.

In addition, we should pay special attention to children and elderly victims of crime.

National Crime Victims' Rights Week is an occasion to support crime victims. If we don't make a commitment to treating victims with the fairness, dignity, and respect they deserve, it makes it even more difficult for them to heal.

For all these important reasons, I urge my colleagues to support this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California, my colleague in the National Conference of State Legislatures and my colleague here in Congress and the author of this resolution, Mr. Costa.

I would just like to say I appreciate Mr. Royce's comments.

Mr. Speaker, in Tennessee, I worked to pass an antistalking law and was successful in doing it. They are important. Whether it's Kathleen in southern California or Victoria in Texas, they need to be protected, and we need to make sure we have such laws.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Towns) to address this subject.

I appreciate the remarks of Congressman Poe, which were obviously heartfelt.

Mr. Speaker, I think there is bipartisanship within this House in looking out for the victims of crime and in trying to see that there aren't more victims. Sometimes you hear speeches on the floor which are written or which are, maybe, not as personal in nature, but what Mr. Poe said was personal. His experience as a prosecutor and as a criminal court judge came through, and I am privileged to have listened to that and to be able to join in his thoughts of: That's just the way it is.

I ask that all of my colleagues join me in supporting this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my strong support for H. Res. 1104, Supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims' Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States. I would also like to commend Congressman Jim Costa, the sponsor of this resolution, for his commitment to increasing awareness of protecting the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States.

This resolution draws critical attention to the impact that crime has on the people of the United States. There are over 25 million individuals in the United States that are victims of crime each year, including over 6 million individuals who are victims of violent crime. Crime is a major part of everyday society. The effects of crime touch just about everyone to some degree; the primary group affected are innocent citizens.

According to a United Nations report, the United States is the leading country in financial loss due to violent crimes; the cost is estimated around $45 billion. During a time of recession, this information sheds more light on the impact crime has on our society.

In Georgia alone there are over 422,589 crimes that are reported each year. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, GBI, is working hard to provide the highest quality investigative, scientific, and information services and resources to the criminal justice community and others as authorized by law. At this time, the Investigative Division of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is prioritizing its resources to combat violent crime in Georgia.

Death investigation, investigations of violent crime, and investigations of drug activity which directly contribute to violent crime, currently consume the majority of Investigative Division resources. GBI agents are constantly exploring and developing more effective investigative techniques to address violent crime.

The Dekalb County Police Department understands and strongly embraces the philosophy and strategy of Community Oriented Policing in their daily operations and functions. Proactive strategies that promote lasting crime reduction and problem-solving will be developed and implemented. This will be accomplished through a working partnership based on mutual trust, understanding and a shared responsibility in all branches of government, the police department, the private sector, each citizen and within all of our communities. I would have to agree with President Obama when he said, ``We are going to do everything in our power as long as I'm in the White House and as long as I'm the father of two girls to make sure that we're providing the states the support that they need''; these words were Obama's commitment to continue to fight crime, and provide law enforcement with the necessary tools. During my time as a Dekalb County commissioner I worked in conjunction with local police departments to combat crime and keep my community safe. As a former commissioner, judge, and a father of two children myself, I understand the detrimental impact that crime can have on a community and the importance of increasing awareness of protecting the rights of victims and survivors of crime.

Please join me and support this resolution to bring awareness to the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 1104, supporting the mission and goals of 2010 National Crime Victims' Rights Week to increase public awareness of the rights, needs, and concerns of victims and survivors of crime in the United States,'' introduced by my distinguished colleague from California, Representative Costa.

The 2010 National Crime Victims' Rights Week, April 18 through April 24, 2010, will provide an opportunity for justice systems in the United States to strive to reach the goal of justice for all by ensuring that all victims are afforded legal rights and provided with assistance as they face the financial, physical, spiritual, psychological, and social impact of crime. The theme for 2010 is, ``Crime Victims'' Rights: Fairness. Dignity. Respect.''

Although our Nation has steadily expanded rights, protections, and services for victims of crime, too many victims are still not able to recognize the hope and promise of these expanded rights, protections, and services. Over 25,000 individuals in the United States are victims of crime each year, including over 6,000,000 individuals who are victims of violent crime.

Despite impressive accomplishments over the past 40 years in crime victims' rights and services, there remain many challenges to ensuring all victims--(1) treated with fairness, dignity, and respect; (2) are offered support and services regardless of whether the crimes committed against them to law enforcement; and (3) are recognized as key participants in our system of justice when such crimes are reported.

Observing victims' rights and treating victims with fairness, dignity, and respect serve the public interest by engaging victims in the justice system, inspiring respect for public authorities, and promoting confidence in safety. Justice systems in the United States should ensure that services are available for all victims of crime, including victims from underserved communities of our Nation.

A just society acknowledges the impact of crime on individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities by ensuring that rights, resources, and services available to help rebuild the lives of victims. Individuals in the United States recognize that our homes, neighborhoods, and communities are made safer and stronger by identifying and meeting the needs of crime victims and ensuring justice for all. Treating victims' of crime with fairness, dignity, and respect costs nothing more than taking time to identify victims' needs and concerns, and effective collaboration among justice systems to meet such needs and concerns.

I urge my colleagues to support H. Res. 1104 in increasing the public awareness of the impact on victims' and survivors of crime and the constitutional and statutory rights and needs of victims' and survivors. We all have an obligation in protecting the rights of all people and ensuring that they receive the respect and dignity they deserve.