In the U.S., six to seven and a half million people are victims of stalking every year. Nearly one in six women and one in 17 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point in their lifetimes. In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses stalking in the context of domestic violence and intimate partner violence with national expert Jennifer Landhuis, director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC). They talk about what stalking is, why it's so dangerous, and what's being done among advocates and legal practitioners to address it.
Domestic violence survivors often struggle with financial stability and providing for their children following a separation. Economic instability is a driving factor in why many survivors return to abusive relationships. While survivors may be entitled to access child support, it is often a confusing process that can put them at risk for further abuse. This guide outlines how courts can work with child support agencies to provide survivors with the support they need, and to make the process safe and effective for those survivors who choose to pursue it.
For many, courts can be intimidating, confusing, and discouraging. But small changes can go a long way to improving litigants’ experience. This fact sheet explains how satisfaction surveys can help courts identify problems, inefficiencies, and things that visitors to the court might find confusing or unsafe, particularly in cases involving domestic violence.
Programs providing supervised visitation and/or safe exchange services have been increasingly collaborating with the court and legal systems to provide a more holistic response to domestic violence cases. This fact sheet provides some tips for supervised visitation programs to help support survivors navigating the child support process.
The news is filled with stories about a rise in domestic violence spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. This comes as courts reduce operations to abide by public health restrictions. Yet practitioners in courts across the U.S. are committed to responding to—and reducing the incidence of—domestic violence. On this episode of In Practice, we hear from four of those practitioners, who discuss the challenges courts and communities are experiencing and how the justice system is adapting.
In this episode of In Practice, Kathryn Ford, the Center for Court Innovation’s director of Child Witness Initiatives, discusses child homicide in the context of domestic violence with Dr. Peter Jaffe, a psychologist at Canada's Western University and an expert on children’s exposure to domestic violence. Among the topics they cover are the prevalence of child domestic homicide, the indicators of a high-level of risk to children, and the implications for justice-system practitioners.
Domestic violence cases present challenges to probation departments. Supervising and monitoring offenders requires an understanding not only of the dynamics of domestic violence but the crime’s impact on the entire community. For this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf speaks with James Henderson, a former probation officer and a consultant with the Battered Women's Justice Project, and Aeron Muckala, a corrections agent for the Minnesota Department of Corrections in Bemidji, Minnesota. They discuss how probation departments are meeting the challenges of these difficult and often high-risk cases
Based on a national survey and five in-depth case studies, this study seeks to document how restorative approaches are being applied to intimate partner violence across the country. It concludes with a series of guiding principles and recommendations for the field.
Effective January 2020, New York State has passed reforms sharply curtailing the use of bail. This analysis explains several important provisions intended to protect victims of domestic violence and uses data from New York City to explore the reforms' potential implications in such cases.
One of the most popular requests technical assistance providers receive from sites involves developing training programs. Effective community-based training and education centered on domestic violence helps improve the capacity of justice system professionals to respond safely and appropriately in these cases. The following guide contains ideas and recommendations developed to assist courts and communities in all phases of developing and implementing local domestic violence training programs that specifically targets adult learners.
