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When Rappahannock’s supervisors hear from the public on the county’s proposed 1984-*86 budget, we’re certain that they will be asked to cut something somewhere to bring the tax rate down.
We want to add our voice to the chorus — but on the other side. We ask the supervisors to keep the $4,000 appropriation requested for Rappahannock’s share of a joint Victim-Witness Program to be administered jointly with Fauquier County.
Our former commonwealth’s attorney supported Victim-Witness. Our present commonwealth’s attorney endorses it. The judges who over-" see the dispensing of justice would like to have a Victim-Witness Program in operation here. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Home, when commonwealth’s attorney in Loudoun, was instrumental in putting that county’s model program in place. Judge Shore Robertson wrote to both the Fauquier and Rappahannock supervisors this year, endorsing the concept.
Until recently, victims didn’t matter much in the criminal justice system. They received attention only when they were needed to nail down cases against the guilty. The trauma that victims suffered at the hands of criminals — their feelings of fear, anger and humiliation; their physical, financial and emotional losses — these were largely ignored.
And the system suffered because of it. The system suffered because it needs the confidence of the public to* function efficiently. The public, whose only contact with the criminal justice system usually comes as innocent bystanders to crime, watched the attention given to the perpetrators of crime. Confidence in the system ebbed.
We believe tht confidence in our system of justice — and the cooperation that comes along with confidence — is on the increase today, largely because of the implementation of Victim-Witness Programs. Based either in local police departments or prosecutor’s office and usually paid for out of public fends, Victim-Witness Programs exist all over the country. In California alone there are 35 county-wide programs covering 97 percent of the population and offering help in the form of crisis intervention, counseling and guidance through the
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