Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced today the release of a report on a Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grant totaling $10,551,267 awarded by the New York Office of Victim Services (New York OVS) to Safe Horizon, Inc. (Safe Horizon), New York, New York. With this report, the DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) also released a Management Advisory Memorandum to the DOJ Office of Justice Programs (OJP) advising them of concerns that may affect the administration of VOCA grants more broadly.
Today’s report concerns OJP funding provided to New York OVS to make subgrants to direct victim service providers across the state. As of September 2024, New York OVS paid $4,313,274 of the total grant to Safe Horizon, and Safe Horizon’s project was ongoing. The OIG’s audit concluded Safe Horizon assisted child victims of crime and their families who have experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, or traumatic exposure to violence. However, we found that Safe Horizon should enhance its programmatic and financial policies and procedures, and that its approach for prorating performance data was not supported to ensure performance reports were accurate.
We also found that New York OVS utilized a methodology for awarding VOCA funds to certain subrecipients that did not comply with federal regulations. Specifically, some of New York OVS’s subgrants were funded by both federal and state sources; however, New York OVS did not inform subrecipients of the funding amounts provided from each source at the beginning of the award. As a result, we found Safe Horizon’s federal and state funded expenditures were commingled in a single account. Because we believe this non-compliant subgrant funding approach, or similar models, may be in use in other states, we issued the Management Advisory Memorandum to provide OJP with notification of the potential systemic nature of our findings.
Both the report and the Management Advisory Memorandum contained recommendations for improvement. In the report, the DOJ OIG made five recommendations to OJP. OJP agreed with all five recommendations. New York OVS agreed with our recommendation concerning its operations and agreed to work with Safe Horizon on the other recommendations. Safe Horizon neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendations, and it identified actions it would take in response to the recommendations. The Management Advisory Memorandum contained two additional recommendations for OJP, with which OJP agreed.