St. Mary's County's State's Attorney's Office has been awarded a $496,216 Victims of Crime Act grant to keep its Victim Services Division running through the next fiscal year, part of a statewide push that will send nearly $60 million to victim-support programs across Maryland. The money funds six full-time victim-advocacy positions and partially covers the office's director of victim advocacy. The grant was approved June 23, 2026; months later, on October 6, county officials flagged a troubling local trend: domestic violence is rising even as most other crime categories fall.
A Statewide Pool Stretched Thin
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced the FY 2027 funding, which totals nearly $60 million for victim-services organizations and programming statewide, according to WGMD. The state's Governor's Office of Crime Prevention and Policy received requests totaling more than $81 million from 144 organizations, meaning demand outpaced the available pool by a wide margin. The station reported that providers requested more than $20 million beyond what the state had available to award.
In St. Mary's County specifically, the grant covers advocacy services from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027, and the total program budget — including required county matching funds — reaches $794,132, The BayNet reported. That budget supports a wide range of services. The FY27 awards fund crisis intervention, counseling, legal advocacy, emergency shelter, court accompaniment and other direct services, per the same WGMD account.
Mental-Health Funding Cut, County Picks Up More of the Tab
Not everything in the award held steady. State grant funding for victim mental-health services was eliminated from the approved FY 2027 award in St. Mary's County, the BayNet report noted. At the same time, the county's required match grew from $290,254 to $297,916 after the state reduced its share of the director of victim advocacy's position from 40 percent to 30 percent — shifting more of that cost onto local taxpayers.
Sheriff Points to a Troubling Local Trend
The funding news lands alongside Domestic Violence Awareness Month and a blunt assessment from St. Mary's County Sheriff Steve Hall, who said domestic violence was increasing even as overall criminal activity declined across the county. “Domestic violence is one of the only ones that is going up,” Hall said, according to the Southern Maryland Chronicle, speaking on October 6.
That outlet also described the Southern Maryland Center for Family Advocacy as the county's comprehensive provider of programs for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. The center offers legal services, including attorneys who represent survivors free of charge, along with housing-related case management, the Chronicle reported.
Why the Dollars Are So Tight
The squeeze on victim-services budgets traces back to how the underlying federal fund operates. The Crime Victims Fund, which Victims of Crime Act grants draw from, is financed by fines and penalties from federal criminal cases rather than taxpayer appropriations — meaning its deposits rise and fall with federal prosecutions, not state budgeting decisions. As of July 2026, the fund held approximately $3.702 billion, but after setting aside $1.934 billion in reserves tied to Binance and British American Tobacco settlements, only about $1.768 billion remained available, according to the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators. With $1.628 billion already committed to FY 2026 obligations, just $140 million was left in the fund for FY 2027, the association reported. The group also traces part of the long-term strain to Congress, which began diverting money from the fund to unauthorized programs starting in fiscal year 2012.
Nonprofits elsewhere have felt that squeeze directly. Groups that receive Crime Victims Fund grants have reported a major decrease in funding and said it may stop altogether, a trend they attributed to a decline in federal prosecutions, according to MS NOW.
A separate state budget document spells out the mechanism: Maryland must include enough general funds, combined with the prior year's federal VOCA amount, to guarantee an aggregate of $60 million available through the Governor's Office of Crime Prevention and Policy for VOCA grants to victim-services providers.
For St. Mary's County, the grant will fund six advocacy positions for another year, and the award's funding mix has shifted.
