Data shows that people living in rural areas face high rates of victimization and myriad hurdles to accessing justice, including a lack of services, limited infrastructure hindering access to existing services, geographic challenges, and language access. Gaps in the availability of access to legal services in rural areas are particularly profound. To address these gaps, the federal Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) envisioned a national effort that would build upon existing models of victim services and use of technology to strengthen access to legal services, establish new no cost and low and pro bono service delivery models, and expand community partnerships to holistically serve the legal needs of rural crime victims. NCVLI is the recipient of a cooperative agreement from OVC and through it has issued three subgrants.

During this session, a panel of representatives from these three subgrantees and the project evaluator will highlight challenges crime victims in their service areas face when accessing legal services, discuss the innovative technological solutions they developed to overcome those hurdles, and share the knowledge they gained while connecting crime victims in rural areas with legal services providers using technology.