The VOCA funds play a critical role in our ability to provide compensation to California?s crime victims. These federal funds have allowed California to provide an equitable and more consistent level of service to a large number of victims statewide, to maintain an improved cash flow within the state Restitution Fund, and to provide financial stability to the program. Significantly, during the 2007-08 fiscal year, compensation payments increased 13 percent from the previous year and the program experienced an eight percent increase in applications. The upward trend in payments and applications is a result of the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board?s initiatives continued from 2006, to enhance benefits and expand access to care by providing reasonable levels of reimbursements to service providers and outreach to victims and providers.

Currently our primary measure of efficiency and effectiveness in reducing the financial burden of crime on victims is the average time to process incoming applications. Our program?s main objective is to process incoming applications in an average of 90 days or less. During the 


2007-08 fiscal year, the Board successfully maintained an average processing time that ranged from 80 to 57 days. This average processing time is derived from data entered into the automated claims processing system. Average processing time is calculated from the date an application is received and accepted as complete to the date the eligibility of the application is approved or the date Board staff recommends denial.

California used VOCA administrative funds. The VOCA administrative funds provided the Board with the ability to continue with the implementation of the new state-of the-art, web-based claims processing system, CaRES. Once the CaRES system was rolled out to staff and county partners (Joint Powers) throughout California, we began adding functions and optimizing existing functions. Throughout the year, we developed enhancements and upgrades to CaRES to improve the system?s responsiveness, efficiency and speed. This work continues. This year, we added to CaRES a Criminal Disposition Tracking System (CDTS) to facilitate the imposition of restitution orders against criminal offenders. Restitution Specialists will use CDTS to track crime victim compensation claims and corresponding criminal cases to ensure that restitution orders are complete and timely. In addition, the funds were also utilized for outreach activities and staff training related to the new claims system.