The STOP Program supports communities in their efforts to develop and strengthen effective victim services, law enforcement and prosecution strategies to combat the crimes of intimate partner violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. This program further encourages partnerships among police, prosecutors, the judiciary, victim advocates and service providers, health care providers, faith leaders, and others to help provide Nevada's victims and their families with the protection and services they need to pursue safe and healthy lives within their communities and to hold their offenders accountable for the harm they have done.
In Nevada, the Office of the Attorney General is responsible for coordinating VAWA funds with local agencies. Funds through VAWA provide systematic and sustained focus on permanent systems change within the Nevada criminal justice system, while simultaneously developing a comprehensive network of domestic violence and sexual assault victim service advocates and programs throughout Nevada communities.
VAWA funds may be used for multiple purposes, including:
- Comprehensive training projects (especially multi-disciplinary training).
- Specialized units such as programs in law enforcement or district attorneys' offices.
- Projects developing protocols, policies, and evaluation mechanisms.
- Projects developing data collection and communication systems.
- Sexual assault and domestic violence victim services programs.
- Projects concerning stalking; projects designed for Native American women.
- Projects addressing the needs of older, disabled, and other underserved women.
- Projects supporting statewide multidisciplinary efforts; training of sexual assault forensic medical personnel.
- Assistance for domestic violence and sexual assault victims with immigration matters.
Generally, the State of Nevada emphasizes the following overarching themes:
- Create, expand, or support local or regional collaborative responses to victims of intimate partner, dating and sexual violence, and stalking to more effectively utilize grant funding
- Support and retain core services for victims of sexual and intimate partner violence, particularly support for rape crisis centers and shelters;
- Increase support for sexual assault victims, including services, law enforcement response and prosecution.
- Support advocacy for victims of VAWA-eligible crimes (community-based and/or system-based);
- Serve areas showing the greatest need based on the availability of existing intimate partner violence and sexual assault programs in the population and geographic area to be served;
- Address the needs of underserved populations, particularly communities of color, and including victims who may be elderly or disabled, as well as victims who are isolated for reasons such as homelessness, sexual orientation, gender identification, substance use, mental health issues, and human trafficking: Trafficking for purposes of VAWA funding includes foreign and domestic victims of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, but not general labor trafficking, unless qualifying VAWA crimes are committed against them.
- Provide basic and advanced training to law enforcement and courts (governmental and Tribal), prosecutors, victim service providers (including cross-disciplinary training with system-based advocates and other criminal justice professionals, expert witness training);
- Provide competent, culturally specific services beyond bilingual advocacy;
- Provide comprehensive, coordinated case management services to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking to include the coordination of referrals and services through with the agencies involved with the victim; and
- Develop data collection and analysis projects to better document criminal justice and victim services performance and statistics relating to intimate partner, dating and sexual violence, and stalking, to better gauge the effectiveness of and improve the local, regional and state response to these crimes.