Presidential Documents

21031

Federal Register

Vol. 60, No. 82

Friday, April 28, 1995

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.
21032 Federal Register / Vol. 60, No. 82 / Friday, April 28, 1995 / Presidential Documents

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

[FR Doc. 95–10715

Filed 4–27–95; 10:35 am]

Billing code 3195–01–P

and nineteenth.

œ–