Elizabeth Cronin Elizabeth Cronin

An online web tool created by the state to connect victims of crime with attorneys in New York has expanded to offer services for residents in 26 counties—up from just three when the program started last year.

The service is provided by the state Office of Victim Services, which expects it to be available in each of the state's counties outside New York City by the end of the year.

“I think it's exactly what we wanted it to be,” said Elizabeth Cronin, director of OVS.

The website, called New York Crime Victims Legal Help, launched last year as a pilot program in three counties: Erie, Niagara and Genesee. Since then, it's racked up more than 5,000 unique users, Cronin said, with an expectation that traffic will increase along with the new expansion.

Crime victims from 23 other counties in upstate New York will now be able to connect with attorneys in their area through the site. Those counties include Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren, Washington, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster, Westchester, Fulton, Montgomery, Schoharie, Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton and St. Lawrence.

The website is designed to connect crime victims with eight major categories of civil legal services, ranging from family law to immigration. Those categories are then broken down into more specific issues, like getting custody of a child after a domestic violence incident or helping immigrants with their visa.

Cronin said they've tried to make the website as easy as possible for victims to use, which is reflected in its design.

Users only have to enter two points of information to find contact information for an attorney who specializes in the area of law they need help with: the county they live in and what kind of legal help they're seeking. From there, the website populates a list of nonprofit civil legal groups that can provide those services.

The information for each group is drawn from LawHelpNY.org, a website powered by Pro Bono Net to connect low-income residents with attorneys. Pro Bono Net partnered with Empire Justice Center and the Center for Human Services Research at SUNY Albany to launch the website with the state in recent years.

The most-requested legal services sought by users of the website have included information about the rights of victims, family law, domestic violence matters, safety issues and housing assistance, Cronin said. That's roughly in line with what was most requested when it launched.

“For people who have all kinds of needs—housing, employment, immigration—we're going to be able to help crime victims with this,” Cronin said. “It's very exciting for us to see this happening and to know by the end of the year the whole state will be covered by this resource.”

By the whole state, Cronin meant outside New York City. The tool on the website is geared toward rural areas, where victims may not know where to turn when seeking help with civil legal services. New York City, meanwhile, has a slew of nonprofit organizations that are relatively easy for victims to find.

But curiously, data collected since the website launched showed that many of its users have still come from New York City, Cronin said. They've taken advantage of other parts of the website, of which there are many, to find help with their own legal issues. The site provides general information on what services are available to victims, for example, and legal documents that pertain to those matters.

Users, regardless of where they live, can use the website to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over housing discrimination, for example. Immigrants also have the option to file their own visa petition without an attorney.

Cronin said the feedback they've gotten about the website has been overwhelmingly positive. Users have been particularly engaged with the live-chat function, which connects victims with someone who can help them find what they're looking for on the website, Cronin said.

Victims, importantly, don't have to enter any identifying information while using any of the website's features. Everything they do there, including the live chat, is anonymous.

The website even has a button at the top of each page that instantly redirects them to a search engine. That's in case users are put in a situation where it may not be safe for them to be on the site in the company of others, like in cases of domestic violence.

“We're trying to meet the needs of anyone who would have to access this information,” Cronin said.

When the web tool launched last year, 30 nonprofit civil legal aid providers and victims services organizations were listed for users to connect with. That's expected to grow significantly as the website expands, partly because of funding obtained by the state, Cronin said.

Federal grants administered by OVS last year allowed 61 victim assistance programs and child advocacy centers to hire attorneys that offer civil legal services. Each of those programs were required to be listed on the website as a condition of that funding.

That's separate from the initial federal grant the state was awarded to create the website, which has been in development for the last several years. Aside from providing a new resource for victims, Cronin said the online tool has had the extra benefit of redirecting victims to the OVS website, where they can learn about other services offered by the state.

“It makes people aware of OVS. We're kind of the unsung hero in many ways,” Cronin said. “People have this resource available and they don't know what we can do, so this is another way for the public to learn about the services OVS has available.”

The website will next expand to include other counties in Western New York and on Long Island, with the rest of the state outside New York City to follow soon after.

Victims can access the website online at https://crimevictimshelpny.org.

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