Eric Lee

    It is common for both the complaining witness and the defendant in a domestic violence case to believe that the victim brought the violence on herself. The court can respond to this by making sure that defendants understand that they are directly accountable to the judge for their behavior towards the complainant and their compliance with court orders. Domestic violence courts can encourage another kind of accountability as well, holding government and nonprofit partners accountable for serving victims and monitoring defendants in the most effective manner possible. Build strong relationships with service providers. Information is crucial to any effort to promote accountability. Strong relationships with service providers, such as batterers intervention programs and substance abuse treatment providers, ensure that when a defendant is noncompliant, the court is notified right away and can act accordingly. In Buffalo, service referrals are made through a clinical center located right in the courthouse, ensuring that information flows smoothly both from and to the court. Hold batterers programs accountable. Judges and case managers should research local batterers programs to determine which ones will reinforce the court’s message to defendants. Additionally, the court needs to work together with batterers programs so that they know what they have to tell the court and why. One batterers intervention program in Brooklyn, not accustomed to being accountable to the court, reported as a matter of course that all offenders sentenced to the program were in compliance even if they were not. When the court realized this, it stopped referring defendants to that program. This example highlights the need for constant communication with off-site programs. Think creatively. In many jurisdictions the local probation department can provide the court with specialized domestic violence officers to help supervise offenders. Probation and parole departments can monitor offenders even when they are no longer being monitored directly by the court. And local nonprofits can pitch in as well. In Queens, the domestic violence court has a representative from a local batterers intervention program sitting in the courtroom in order to conduct an immediate intake for each sentenced offender. This process eliminates a step from the process—sending the offender off-site to participate in an assessment interview—and thus improves efficiency and accountability. Use technology to enhance access to information. Computer technology can streamline the information process and ensure that relevant information flows continuously, quickly, and reliably to all dedicated personnel. Dedicated domestic violence courts use technology to help avoid contradictory rulings and to make more informed decisions about sentencing. New York has developed a specialized domestic violence technology application to allow judges, case managers, district attorneys, defense attorneys, probation officers, and community partners to have immediate access to important information regarding each domestic violence case.  

  To combat domestic violence, all segments of a community have to work together to send a consistent message that violence is not acceptable. Domestic violence courts can play a critical role in raising public consciousness and convening disparate partners to improve interagency communication. Create strong linkages with a wide range of partners. Because of its complexity, domestic violence inevitably involves a variety of local systems, agencies, and individuals. Recognizing this, domestic violence courts should aspire to expand the range of organizations that are involved in the court’s efforts. Partnerships between the domestic violence court and the many agencies that provide victim assistance/advocacy and defendant monitoring help to strengthen the message to the defendant—and to the community—that domestic violence is not tolerated. Convene regular meetings with criminal justice and social service partners. Interagency collaboration is crucial to ensuring communication, consistency, and continuing education about the court and domestic violence. The domestic violence judge can be a catalyst, providing leadership to the collaboration. Judges should invite all of the court’s partners—representatives from the prosecutor’s office, the defense bar, court officers, victim advocates, resource coordinators, batterers intervention programs, and probation—to participate in regular meetings. The meetings create an opportunity to clarify and understand the court’s expectation of everyone’s roles. Partner meetings can also focus on strengthening outreach to underserved communities and devising preventive education models. Partners, meetings in Westchester County, for example, frequently draw representatives from as many as fifty agencies to share new strategies and form new linkages. Provide court personnel and partners with domestic violence education and training. Domestic violence courts can continually educate and update staff and partners by scheduling regular court-sponsored trainings. In New York’s domestic violence courts, trainings have been held on a variety of topics featuring a wide range of both local and national experts. Trainings have ranged from “Domestic Violence 101” presentations held during Domestic Violence Awareness month to more in-depth day-long presentations focused on specific issues such as the overlap of child maltreatment and domestic violence. The goals of these trainings are really twofold—to provide ongoing support and reinforcement on domestic violence issues to court personnel and partners as well and to highlight the court’s commitment to handling domestic violence cases in an educated and serious manner.

To gain insight into questions about problem-solving courts and their expansion, in 2003 a Center for Court Innovation research team conducted four focus group sessions (in Burbank and San Francisco, California, and in New York City and Rochester, New York) and several individual interviews among a diverse group of judges with experience in drug courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts, and other collaborative justice courts in those two states. In total, 35 judges participated in this exploratory research. The findings, although not necessarily representative of the general population of problem-solving court judges, provide important insights into the potential transferability of new practices to general court calendars. In the following excerpt, the question of how domestic violence courts compare to other problem-solving courts is addressed.     Focus group participants noted that there is a divide between domestic violence courts and other problem-solving court models, a divide marked by significant differences in philosophy and practice. This suggests that there may be no single, universal body of problem-solving principles and practices. It also suggests that the type of problem-solving court experience judges have had may influence how they view problem solving and what they consider to be transferable components. This fact was frequently acknowledged, both explicitly and implicitly, in exchanges among focus group participants. Perhaps most significant for this discussion, domestic violence courts do not view defendant rehabilitation as a high-priority part of the problem-solving process. This differs sharply from most problem-solving courts (with the possible exception of community courts). Rather, the mission of domestic violence courts concentrates more on the promotion of victim safety and offender accountability. In focus groups, judges further discussed the differences between domestic violence and other problem-solving courts. Domestic Violence Court Operations Based on experience, one judge believed you could effectively apply all the core problem-solving court practices in a domestic violence court, except that it would be inappropriate for the courtroom to applaud defendant compliance, and you would need to tone down the use of incentives and sanctions. However, most judges articulated major differences between domestic violence court operations and those of other problem-solving courts. The primary difference concerned the basic dispositional processes in the court. In domestic violence court, unlike in most other problem-solving courts, the determination of guilt is an integral component, which often leads to an adversarial atmosphere in which defendants deny culpability and resist participation in community-based sanctions and services. This tension persists even in post-disposition monitoring, one judge in the Rochester group noted, because domestic violence courts will not tolerate violent recidivism the way a drug court might tolerate relapse: “There is an immediate punishment for any kind of behavior like that.” As another judge in that group pointed out, domestic violence courts have really adopted only the punitive tools of behavioral modification; there are sanctions but no rewards. Explained a New York City judge, “We don’t clap when you complete a domestic violence accountability program.” Again, this view of the adversarial nature of domestic violence court operations was not universal. One judge believed a truly collaborative approach could emerge by building trust over time among the judge, district attorney, and public defender. Another key difference is court volume. domestic violence court judges reported that they had staggering caseloads, far more than in other problem-solving courts. This left them with little time to spend either on individual interactions or on return court monitoring appearances; as a result, some judges were forced to rely on probation for monitoring. Finally, a few judges remarked on the procedural challenges posed in domestic violence courts by evidence-based prosecution and victim recantation, both issues that rarely arise in other courts. These two issues, which can take up substantial amounts of court time, require both the judge and attorneys to have technical expertise. Indeed, one of the areas in which domestic violence courts were seen as very similar to other problem-solving courts was in the need for specialized knowledge. Program Mandates While drug court judges frequently stressed the need to understand the psychopharmacology of addiction, there is no equivalent concept in domestic violence. One cannot describe domestic violence in terms of a disease model, and there is no known “cure.” So while the process of placing and monitoring defendants in batterer intervention programs may seem similar to that of placing and monitoring defendants in substance abuse or mental health treatment, some judges observed that it is done with a different intention. Batterer intervention programs may be mandated as much for purposes of supervision and punishment as for rehabilitation. Overall, domestic violence courts do share several common features with other problem-solving courts: a larger team composed of judge, attorneys, resource coordination staff, and treatment representatives; community outreach; monitoring and accountability; and extra information about defendants and their compliance. But most judges cited other features as noticeably absent: substantial time for each case; non-adversarial deliberations; and interactive, theatrical dimensions with respect to the judge-defendant-audience relationship.  

  In an effort to bridge the worlds of research and practice at a critical moment in the life of drug courts, the Center for Court Innovation, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, brought together in November 2003 a select group of state administrators and drug court scholars to discuss a series of important questions: What can researchers tell state officials about drug court operations and impacts? What can’t they tell them that they need to know? Going forward, are there a handful of strategic investments in research that would reap significant dividends for the field as a whole? And how will state leaders know if their efforts to promote statewide drug court reform are successful? One thing became quickly apparent during the conversation: as in many areas of social policy, researchers and practitioners rarely talk to one another. Indeed, the scholars at the table lamented that research had not played a particularly influential role in shaping drug court policy to date. Why is that so? There were several reasons cited at the roundtable, but they all spoke generally to a single theme: the cultural divide between research and practice. This divide has several dimensions. One is philosophical: Urban Institute researcher Shelli Rossman summarized this neatly when she observed that “researchers start with the assumption that an intervention does not work and try to disprove it . . . . Practitioners, however, want to start from the position that they’re doing something that they already know works.” Another dimension is practical: researchers tend to talk to one another, rather than to practitioners whose work they are studying, observed University of Pennsylvania scholar Douglas Marlowe. For Hennepin County, Minnesota Chief Judge Kevin Burke, the issue is the differing reward systems for both professions. While researchers worry about getting papers published, judges worry about getting re-elected and re-appointed. Although research may not have been integral to drug court development to date, this may soon change. While the first phase of the drug court movement was dominated by individual judicial leaders at the grassroots level and the second phase by drug courts’ success at attracting the attention of decision makers at the federal level, the action seems to be shifting more and more to the state level. All across the country, states are increasingly assuming fiscal and programmatic authority over drug courts. Along with this new authority comes the pressure to document results—and to identify best practices, enforce quality standards and determine eligibility criteria (including whether drug courts should handle higher level offenders). Research can help  administrators make better, more informed decisions in all of these areas. Albeit frustrated by their lack of a voice in drug court policymaking decisions to date, scholars at the roundtable did report widespread consensus in the research community that, when properly implemented, drug courts offer a powerful means for changing the behavior of addicted offenders. As Doug Marlowe said, “There’s no room for debate: the application of certain, swift and appropriately modulated sanctions and rewards improves behavior over time.” Participants around the table identified the following elements as crucial to successful drug court implementation: enrolling addicted offenders into treatment quickly; imposing sanctions and rewards swiftly and appropriately; bringing high-risk offenders back before the judge regularly; creating effective screening mechanisms to identify eligible cases; graduating a significant percentage of participants; and ensuring that drug court participants feel they are being treated respectfully by the judge and are being listened to in the courtroom. At the same time, researchers also acknowledged that that there was much still to be learned about what makes drug courts work. “What we know [about drug courts] is very small and what we think we know is much bigger,” said Urban Institute researcher John Roman. For researchers, the critical question is whether drug court implementation will heed the wisdom of drug court research, or if resource constraints will force administrators to cut corners and thus decrease the effectiveness of the drug court model. For example, roundtable participants raised questions about whether drug courts with heavy caseloads could afford to schedule weekly or bi-weekly judicial status hearings with the high-risk offenders who appear to benefit most from interacting regularly with a judge. In addition to resources, other participants raised concerns about a potential “novelty effect”: the idea that drug courts, like many demonstration projects, will show less positive results over time as the novelty wears off. Both scholars and practitioners agreed that certain aspects of the drug court model needed improvement. Treatment emerged as a critical area of concern, with several roundtable participants noting that treatment programs in the field were slow to catch up with emerging best practice standards. While University of Maryland researcher Faye Taxman suggested that one obstacle to change was that these new treatment models appear to “threaten practitioner discretion,” other roundtable participants said that drug court judges could help move the process along, arguing (in Doug Marlowe’s words) that “if anyone is going to hold the treatment system accountable, it’s the court system.” The issue of race also came up a number of times in the discussion, mostly by practitioners looking for guidance with regard to how to work effectively with minority populations. Hennepin County, Minnesota’s chief judge, Kevin Burke, said the key to working with this population was to “build a sense of hope. . . . If there’s anything a judge can do, it’s to convey to a young person that they can be something.” Taxman concurred, pointing out that research showed that young African-American males need “positive reinforce[ment]” from authority figures to succeed. However, Burke also raised concerns about fairness, contending that drug courts needed to be careful not to put excessive pressure on African-American defendants to forego an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of an arrest in exchange for being offered drug treatment. This roundtable was part of a series organized by the Center for Court Innovation and the Department of Justice. Previous roundtable events have addressed such topics as the reintegration of drug court graduates into their home communities, mental illness, community justice and due process in problem-solving courts.