SITE LAST UPDATED: September 22, 2006

The Attorney General's Commitment to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Overview

The Attorney General's Criminal Bureau has four broad missions: investigate and prosecute violations of state criminal law, promote effective law enforcement and criminal justice, crime prevention, and provide assistance to crime victims.

The Criminal Bureau's staff of experienced State Police detectives, investigators, and assistant attorneys general focus on investigating and prosecuting crimes that are not usually handled by the state's district attorneys. These crimes include organized crime, large-scale drug trafficking, political corruption and complex criminal conspiracies, crimes against the government, consumer fraud, insurance fraud, economic crime, computer crime and environmental crime. The cases investigated and prosecuted by the Criminal Bureau are referred to it by crime victims and other citizens, police departments, government agencies and district attorneys offices. More than 1000 allegations of criminal conduct are referred to the Criminal Bureau each year.

The Criminal Bureau promotes effective law enforcement through its Criminal Justice Policy Division. This division reviews crime data and trends, proposes legislation, participates in training programs for law enforcement officers and other criminal justice professionals, and maintains working relationships with many local, state and federal criminal justice agencies. Through these working relationships, Bureau members regularly convene or participate in multi-agency working groups dealing with criminal justice issues such as anti-terrorism planning, drug and alcohol abuse, sentencing reform, prisoner re-entry initiatives, domestic violence and child abuse.

The Criminal Bureau's Safe Neighborhood Initiative Division promotes crime prevention in communities by fostering partnerships between schools, community groups, prosecutors, police officers, courts and other criminal justice professionals. Through these partnerships, the division helps communities implement crime prevention programs and other initiatives to steer those involved in minor criminal offenses into prevention programs, and aggressively prosecute those responsible for crimes that severely impact the community's quality of life.

The fourth primary mission of the Criminal Bureau is to provide support to victims of crime. The Bureau's Victim Compensation and Assistance Division provides financial and social services assistance to crime victims and relatives of homicide victims. Because of the division's outreach efforts and relationships with police departments, court officials, and social service agencies, the division receives more than 1500 requests each year for financial assistance.

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