Reluctant Victims and Timeliness: Advice for Prosecutors
The primary challenge noted in court surveys was the difficulty of reaching victims and the “fluidity” of victim cooperation, as one response framed it. According to survey respondents, this problem not only hinders prosecution, but it also poses a threat to victim safety when victims seek withdrawal of orders of protection, “identify” with the person who perpetrated the abuse, or refuse to testify.
One recommendation from advocates and prosecutors for addressing these issues was to reach out to the victim at the time of the incident or as soon as possible afterwards (at arraignment or bail hearing) to educate the victim about the criminal court process, and provide “options counseling,” which provides victims with information about the choices and services available to
them. In one of the sites we visited, one of the dedicated prosecutors served as a dedicated “witness advocate” and provided precisely these kinds of educational and support services related to the legal process. This site also included dedicated victim advocates who were employed by a local nonprofit agency and whose work complemented the witness advocate by focusing more on counseling, safety planning, and social services beyond the immediate legal process. A second recommendation was to “always be prepared for ‘victimless’ prosecutions” and to “try to resolve cases as quickly as possible; multiple continuances are detrimental to domestic violence cases.” Conversely, another prosecutor claimed, “No-drop policies are not realistic and take away efforts from other cases.”
On many site visits and in the court survey, stakeholders cited early resolution and rapid speed of case processing as an important strength of the domestic violence court. Prosecutors also suggested that quick processing of cases achieves better results. One prosecutor went so far as to say, “Time is our enemy.” Two prosecutors indicated on their surveys that they had learned the importance of flexibility and creativity. As noted earlier, five prosecutors reported that in their estimation, expedited prosecution and few continuances produce better results.
Programs for Offenders
Some stakeholders recommended increased mental health evaluations and use of drug and alcohol treatment programs as a condition of probation. A few believed that their jurisdiction lacked sufficient resources in regard to offender programs, and a few believed that batterer programs were not effective. Other stakeholders saw offender programs as a beneficial alternative that improves outcomes, with a stakeholder at one court claiming that the domestic violence counseling program (batterer program) reduced recidivism by about 70%. At the same time, responses to the court survey urged caution: “Beware defendant manipulation” and have “stricter guidelines for treatment programs.” Two responses decried the “one size fits all” approach of batterer programs, with one respondent stating,
I would like to see a mandatory assessment process for each domestic violence offender not done by BTP [batterer treatment program] provider. I’m not convinced that [a] 52-week program is necessary in all cases. Just as substance abusers require different levels of treatment, so do batterers.
A challenge mentioned by seven court survey respondents is that defendants often cannot afford programs and therefore were unable to comply with court orders. One saw this problem of noncompliance due to inability to pay as exacerbated by the current economic crisis.
Volume and Adequate Staffing
The knowledgeable staff and informed decision making that stakeholders perceived as the great advantages of domestic violence courts can be undermined by the sheer volume of cases. On the court survey, seven respondents identified volume as the primary challenge, with two commenting that the caseload in the domestic violence court prevented adequate case review and implementation of judicial monitoring.
Framing the issue of caseload differently, 15 court survey respondents identified inadequate staffing—or lack of funding to staff the domestic violence court adequately—as the primary
challenge. Four specifically mentioned lack of funding for probation supervision, eight identified lack of resources for offender programming, one identified insufficient services for victims, and others mentioned needing more domestic violence court services and more clerks. In site visits as well, the need for more victim advocates and more probation officers was frequently mentioned. In one site, again, the comment was made that judicial monitoring was ineffective because the caseload was too high and there was inadequate time allotted for each case. In another, the problem was that the prosecutor’s office has insufficient staffing, money, and technical assistance, and in another, the resource coordinator’s caseload was too high, prohibiting tracking and monitoring.
Other courts that apparently had adequate resources found that their successes could be attributed to just these features: probation, services for victims, cooperation among multiple agencies that helped victims escape abuse, effective monitoring and frequent case review, and programs for offenders. One stakeholder mentioned that, contrary to expectations, having a domestic violence court actually lightened the overall criminal court caseload because the resource coordinator was able to relieve the burden on the courts. This stakeholder did not fully explain the observation, but the point appears to be that the establishment of the domestic violence court provided justification to hire a dedicated resource coordinator, whose efforts in turn alleviated some of the strain on other court staff.
Another court dealt with the case overload issue by capping the number of cases from the start; they took only as many cases into the domestic violence court as they estimated they could handle given the staffing and then gave those cases more intensive attention than the would have received in a nonspecialized court.