Federal funding for violence intervention programs in NC 'insufficient'

Two Triad cities have been awarded federal Victim of Crime Act (VOCA) grants for violence intervention programs. But the funding falls far short of years past while the need in some communities has grown.

Last week the Governor’s Crime Commission signed off on $3.5 million for North Carolina, with roughly $400,000 earmarked for the Triad. Two domestic violence intervention programs in Winston-Salem will receive $50,000 apiece.

And in Greensboro, the city’s Behavioral Health Program gets a quarter of a million dollars to train staff and standardize resource sharing among all four of its violence intervention organizations. Governor's Crime Commission Executive Director Caroline Farmer calls the statewide VOCA funding a drop in the bucket and a steady decline from its peak of some $100 million just a few years ago.

"It is funding that comes from the U.S. attorneys, from lawsuits, and the funding for this year has been held up in a lawsuit," she says. "So, because of that, we do not have the full amount of funding that we would have had for next year’s VOCA."

Farmer says local law enforcement figures and the Department of Health and Human Services’ database of firearm-related injuries at hospitals shows that the violent crime rate in many of North Carolina’s rural areas is on the rise. She says it takes years for violence in those communities to get where it is, and it will take years for it to go down.