Video: DA advocates for ‘victim-centered justice’ at victims awareness event
– San Luis Obispo County officials on Wednesday marked Crime Victims’ Rights Awareness Month with a public event at the County Board of Supervisors chambers, where District Attorney Dan Dow urged a shift in how the justice system is viewed — placing equal emphasis on victims alongside offenders.
The video of the event is available above. Dow also released the transcript of his prepared speech:
It is an honor to be here with you today as we recognize April as Crime Victims’ Rights Awareness Month. Thank you to all who have gathered this morning — to our victim advocates, our law enforcement partners, our community organizations, and most importantly, to the survivors and victims who remind us every day why this work matters.
I want to begin this morning with a simple observation — and a challenge. We have long called what we do the “criminal justice system.” Years ago, one of my staff tried to console a frustrated victim by saying: “It’s not called the victim justice system — it’s called the criminal justice system.” That statement was meant to explain a painful reality. But I refuse to accept it as a permanent one. So I am asking everyone in this room — and everyone you influence — to join me in changing the language we use. Let us call it what it should be: the Criminal AND Victim Justice System. That one word — “and” — matters enormously. Every time legislators, policymakers, and voters hear those words, they will be reminded that every decision, every reform, every sentence has a profound and lasting impact on a real human being who was harmed.
The People of California have spoken loudly on this subject. In 1982, they passed Proposition 8, creating the first statutory and constitutional rights for crime victims. But over the following years, it became clear that those protections were not enough. So on November 4, 2008, Californians passed Proposition 9 — Marsy’s Law — creating 17 enumerated constitutional rights for crime victims and declaring that this law was needed, in their own words, “to remedy a justice system that fails to fully recognize and adequately enforce the rights of victims of crime.” That mandate from the People is written into the California Constitution, Article I, Section 28. It has not changed. And we have a solemn obligation to honor it.
Yet we must be honest — there is still a great deal of hard work ahead. Victims continue to tell us they feel overlooked by a system that seems more focused on offenders than on those who were harmed. Their dignity as individuals — their right to be present, to be heard, to be informed — is too often an afterthought rather than a priority. Marsy’s Law did not end that struggle. It gave us the tools and the constitutional mandate to fight it. And fight it we must.
Meanwhile, in Sacramento, we have watched in recent years as reform after reform has been enacted with little to no regard for the effect on crime victims. AB 109, Propositions 47 and 57 — we were promised smarter, more humane outcomes. Instead, we have seen weakened accountability, broken promises to victims when sentences were imposed, and dangerous offenders returned to communities. We have even seen a convicted, able-bodied serial child molester — who admitted at his own parole hearing that he is still sexually attracted to young children — granted early release under elder parole, a provision that was sold to the public as compassionate care for the frail and dying. That is not justice. That is a betrayal of every victim and every family who trusted the system to protect them.
The good news is that the people of California are ahead of their elected officials. In 2024, seventy percent of voters passed Proposition 36, sending an unmistakable message that accountability and victim-centered justice matter. That is the spirit that must guide us.
Here in San Luis Obispo County, we have tried to answer that call every day. Last year alone, our office received nearly 12,000 cases, and our victim advocates served approximately 9,880 victims — from domestic violence and sexual assault to homicide, child abuse, DUI, and theft. Each of those nearly ten thousand people represents a life disrupted, a family shaken, a human being who deserves to be seen and supported.
That brings me to something that fills me with enormous pride. This year, we mark the 49th anniversary of our Christopher G. Money Victim Witness Assistance Center. In 1977, San Luis Obispo County was one of only two counties in all of California to establish a victim assistance center — a testament to the vision and compassion of former District Attorney Christopher G. Money. We dedicated our center in his honor in 2017, and that legacy has only grown stronger with each passing year.
Forty-nine years of walking alongside victims. Forty-nine years of saying: you will not be forgotten. You will be seen. You will have a voice in the Criminal AND Victim Justice System.
And so I want to close with an invitation. Begin planning now to join us next year for our 50th Anniversary celebration of the Christopher G. Money Victim Witness Assistance Center. It will be a moment to honor fifty years of extraordinary service, to celebrate the advocates who have made this center what it is, and to recommit ourselves to the mission of ensuring that every person harmed by crime in this county knows they are not alone.
Because justice is not complete until the victim – the survivor – is included.
Thank you.
Dan Dow
District Attorney
County of San Luis Obispo
