Mission and Values

Our Mission

NCVLI actively promotes comprehensive and enforceable legal rights for crime victims, and access to knowledgeable attorneys to help protect those rights in every case through victim centered legal advocacy, education, and resources.

Our Vision

We envision a justice system in which every crime victim has:

• comprehensive and meaningful legal rights;
• access to a trained victims’ rights attorney at no cost; and
• rights that are recognized and enforced.

How We Advance Our Mission & Vision

Our Values

• Empowerment. Voice, choice and agency are critical components of empowerment. We recognize and acknowledge that individual experiences, needs, and decisions will vary and support empowerment by providing legal expertise to ensure victims may make informed decisions, and to have those decisions honored and respected throughout the criminal justice process.
• Dignity. We value the dignity of all individuals and believe that every person deserves to be treated with respect and with care for their well-being.
• Equity. NCVLI works to ensure all victims - no matter who they are and what their background - have their rights afforded and are treated by the justice system with respect and dignity. Please see our equity full statement for more on how we approach this work.
• Collaboration. We view our work as part of a national community - where we actively seek out, amplify, complement, and support the work, knowledge, and perspectives of other organizations and individuals - to ensure that victims’ rights are respected and enforced throughout the country.
• Innovation. We value creative legal analysis, inventive solutions and strategic litigation to advance victims’ rights.

Commitment to Equity

We recognize that to honor our mission, vision and values, and to contribute to a more just system, we must continue working to remove historical and systemic racism and discrimination. We recognize that this work is evolving and ongoing and we are cognizant that we will misstep in our pursuit of equity. We will learn from our mistakes and hold ourselves accountable to our principles. Our work must continue to reflect our commitment to individuals and communities that the criminal justice system has historically underserved, oppressed, and harmed. Read our Equity Commitment Statement.

Our Tools 

• Training & Education. We will continue to train nationwide on the meaning, scope, and enforceability of victims’ rights, to host the Crime Victim Law Conference, and to maintain a robust online Victim Law Library. As we look forward, we will ensure the broadest reach of our work through social media engagement, technology advancements, and dissemination of our legal writings. We will enhance community awareness of the existence of victims’ rights, and how they can ask for them in a variety of venues, and we will grow the capacity of law students and lawyers to represent crime victims.
• Legal Advocacy. We will continue to ensure attorneys and advocates working with crime victims can make the best arguments possible to protect victims’ rights by providing them with technical assistance in the form of legal research, writing, strategic consultation, and amicus curiae (friend of the court) support in strategic cases. As we look forward, we will redouble our efforts to secure positive appellate case law through enhanced litigation tools and technical assistance for attorneys representing victims, active participation in appellate litigation, and creation and dissemination of pro se victims’ rights assertion tools.
• Public Policy. We will continue to work in partnership with others across the country to secure victims’ rights legislation that guarantees victims substantive rights and the procedural mechanisms to secure those rights. As we look forward, we will more actively develop and disseminate model legislation, host policy forums, and work to ensure victims’ voices and rights are centered in policy conversations.

 

NCVLI advocates for all survivors, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, religion, immigrant status, or ability.