National Crime Victims' Rights Week, 1995

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Part II

The President

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Proclamation 6791--National Crime Victims' Rights Week,
1995 [[Page 21030]]

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Title 3--
The President

Proclamation 6791 of April 26, 1995

National Crime Victims' Rights Week, 1995

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

Every year, more than 36 million people in America
become the victims of crime. Offenders prey on our
daughters and sons, sisters and brothers, parents,
grandparents, and friends. Violent crime is creating
fear and insecurity in communities across our Nation.

To ensure justice and promote healing, a grassroots
crime victims' movement has worked to enact numerous
initiatives in State legislatures across the country--
laws that now provide crucial rights for crime victims
and their families. As we mark National Crime Victims'
Rights Week this year, Americans join in remembering
the fallen, in celebrating criminal justice reforms,
and in envisioning a future free from violence.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994, which I signed into law this past September,
ensures that our criminal justice system recognizes the
victims. Its provisions include allocution rights for
victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, truth in
sentencing guidelines to ensure that violent offenders
serve longer sentences, and sex offender registries
designed to monitor offenders more effectively. This
Act will help put 100,000 more police officers on the
streets of our communities. And the landmark Violence
Against Women Act is the first comprehensive Federal
effort to address violence against women.

But no government can be truly effective without the
active involvement of its citizens. Victim advocacy--
the work of the more than 8,000 organizations and the
countless individuals we honor this week--can be a
lifeline to emotional survival. When random bullets
wound a child, when a battered woman needs shelter in
the night, when a rape survivor seeks help--victim
advocates are there to comfort and support. Many of our
Nation's crime victims and advocates work tirelessly in
schools, neighborhoods, and youth custody facilities.
They give faces and names to the statistics of crime,
opening young peoples' eyes to the reality of violence
and helping to plant seeds of responsibility that can
last a lifetime.

We nonetheless recognize that much remains to be done.
But with continued partnerships between every level of
government, criminal justice and victim advocacy
organizations, and crime survivors and their families,
America can begin to replace the nightmare of crime
with a bright new day of hope.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the
United States of America, by virtue of the authority
vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United
States, do hereby proclaim April 23 through April 29,
1995, as ``National Crime Victims' Rights Week.'' I
urge all Americans to pause and remember the victims of
crime and to join in honoring those who serve crime
victims and their families by working to reduce
violence, to assist those harmed by crime, and to make
our homes and communities safer places in which to
live. [[Page 21032]]

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
twenty-sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and ninety-five, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two
hundred and nineteenth.

(Presidential Sig.)>