[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 17 (Monday, May 1, 1995)]
[Page 724]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 6791--National Crime Victims' Rights Week

April 26, 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.
    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 
and nineteenth.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:35 a.m., April 27, 
1995]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on April 
28.