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The SPRING Project: Aiding Victim Services Professionals

THE SPRING PROJECT: Domestic Violence Resources
Domestic Violence Response Teams

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Notes for collaborative initiatives between law enforcement agencies and victim services agencies to expand services to victims of family violence.

 While law enforcement officers can make victims and their families aware of available services (such as distributing the phone number for a local shelter), more can be done in a pro-active manner to:

  • Bring more services and information to victims
  • Help victims avoid taking initiatives during highly emotional and stressful times
    • for example: suggesting that they call someone tomorrow
  • Bring these services and information to victims as soon as possible
  • Bring services in conjunction with a coordinated law enforcement response
    • advocacy occurs as soon as the scene is secured
  • Increase likelyhood of desired benefits:
    • Victims not confronting officers who just arrested a battering spouse
    • Victims see a greater response to their needs and concerns
    • Victims get a better sense of community concern for their families
    • Victims feel more secure in calling for law enforcement the next time
    • Victims more likely to follow through on safety planning
    • Victims more likely to disclose issues hindering changes in their violent relationships
    • Victims see open doors for additional responses to those issues
    • Victims more likely to cooperate with investigation and prosecution efforts
  • Bring these services to victims in a way that complements efforts of law enforcement, for example, by:
    • Calming and interacting with children and other family members at a scene
    • Allowing law enforcement officers to concentrate on the interview and investigation aspects
    • Calming and reassuring victims
    • Providing an initial outlet for anger, fears and concerns (general emotional support)
    • Ensuring that victims are connected to the appropriate resources and services
  • Carrying and distributing materials to victims
    • Safety planning materials
    • injunction kits or informational materials
    • court process flowcharts or informational materials
    • directory and explanation of county services available
  • Responding in place of sworn officers
    • When victims are seeking information crisis intervention
    • Similar to existing Field Service Officer positions

In programs around the country, outcomes of joint efforts have produced exceptionally favorable results:

In San Diego, since the program was implemented in 2001, DVRT Advocates have responded to over 90% of domestic violence calls from law enforcement. Furthermore, 95% of the families that received a DVRT intervention did not have a subsequent domestic violence incident reported to law enforcement for a minimum of three months.

San Diego additionally noted:

  • Reduced repeat domestic violence calls
  • Increased access to services for entire families
  • Increased successful prosecution of domestic violence cases
  • Reduced back-end intervention costs (more phone calls for additional information, lower numbers of intakes into shelters, especially for single women)

The Marjaree Mason Center (Domestic Violence Crisis Intervention program in Fresno, CA) found that an advocate's support is one method of empowering a victim with self-confidence and the authority to act on their own behalf, noting that when a victim has contact with an advocate immediately or soon after an incidence of violence, that victim is more likely to assist law enforcement with prosecuting the perpetrator.

Two approaches are most currently used around the country:

Model One: Turn Law Enforcement Volunteers into Advocates

Under this model, volunteers of pre-existing law-enforcement-based programs attend additional training via the local domestic violence program and are certified exactly like advocates employed by that agency. This is beneficial, especially for start-up programs because these volunteers will have already had a background check, fingerprinting, and basic law enforcement procedural instruction (for example, how to properly use the radio). Existing programs will already have designated vehicles, fuel budget and equipment for volunteer use - and volunteers will already have uniforms, a chain of command, etc. (Some programs use full-uniform responders, others prefer to set victims at ease by using polo shirts along with photo id, however, non-uniformed volunteers usually do DVRT exclusively and would not be called upon for other duties such as traffic control). Those volunteers who choose to supplement their current volunteer services with DVRT responses can be designated via an arm patch like those already in use for volunteers who participate in parking enforcement or other services requiring additional training.

This model is beneficial for law enforcement because it can be implemented almost as quickly as advocates can be trained and has almost zero additional costs to the sponsoring law enforcement agency (small expense for patches). Enhanced services reach the street quickly and use already existing methods for evaluation and statistical tracking of the number of calls answered and volunteer hours contributed, adding to agency-wide statistics, and providing compelling arguments for future funding proposals, not to mention positive public relations. This model is beneficial for community-based domestic violence crisis intervention programs because it accomplishes one of the hardest tasks they face: letting victims know that services beyond law enforcement response are available.

As a drawback, this model often has a very high volunteer burn out rate as many volunteers suddenly see some of the darker sides of these issues (especially injuries) and cannot accurately anticipate the emotional demand that provision of such services places on them. Volunteers under this model also must commit additional personal time for training (often missing full days of work) and most programs require that their volunteers maintain a higher number of overall volunteer hours in order to continue with these additional duties. Discussion with existing programs suggests that victims and their children report greater comfort when these responders are females age 30-50, and this may be difficult for a community-recruited program to provide with any regularity. For the longer term, as these services expand and become more integrated into regular response, (and begin to produce statistics to support expansion) these volunteers can often step up into employed advocacy positions with the sponsoring law enforcement agency as positions become available.

While this model adds an additional layer of services, it suffers from being dependent on volunteers, which often means that coverage on a Friday or Saturday night is no issue, but that services at 2:00 a.m. on a Wednesday night will not be available. This single factor limits this model to cheap-and-better-than- nothing status. but it may provide a way to test the waters and provide a structure under which to work out policies, procedures and protocols in anticipation of an expanded program utilizing paid employees of the law enforcement agency, the local crisis program, or some combination thereof.

Model Two: Paring Advocates with Law Enforcement Responders

This model provides the same services, but uses already certified victim advocates provided by a community domestic violence crisis program (these are usually actual employees of the program). These are offered to law enforcement for coverage purposes, much as police officers from multiple jurisdictions work on multi-county investigation teams or task forces. Law enforcement provides these advocates with additional law-enforcement-based training, which includes procedural matters (paperwork, radio procedures, 10 codes, chain of command, etc.) and safety issues for secondary responders (when to respond, who to report to on scene, officer safety issues, etc.). This training may be accomplished via existing volunteer training already conducted by the sponsoring agency (i.e. Citizens on Patrol or similar). Advocates with previous law enforcement exposure can usually be implemented very quickly and their home program remains ultimately responsible for salary, overtime, training, etc. This model has longer term benefits because it utilizes persons with extensive exposure to and experience with domestic violence issues. Advocacy personnel are most likely to have a good grasp of the issues at hand, have practice in dealing with irate and hysterical victims, and be most knowledgeable about the details of supplemental programs in the area.

Several variations are possible under this model, almost all of which present different configurations of scheduling, coverage, and physical resources. The most common are:

Advocates work shifts alongside patrol units and with existing law enforcement schedules, often having one advocate assigned to each squad or shift. This model requires that the contributing program have an adequate number of dual-trained personnel to contribute for coverage; a minimum of four if they will provide comprehensive response services on a 24 hour basis, assuming 12 hour shifts. This is a desired arrangement; although it is obviously limited by funding constraints (requires four additional salaries plus benefits) and raises questions about what these advocates will be doing when NOT providing response services (there will be a lot of down time, especially between midnight and 6:00 a.m.). This down time may provide opportunities to provide additional supplemental services for patrol units, but this may endanger funding for the home program whose grant-based salary dollars are intended for provision of direct services to victims. Innovative activities may need to be bi-laterally designed to take advantage of these slow hours. Advocates working under this model typically work in law-enforcement-issued uniforms; the advocate home agency pays for the people, while the law enforcement agency provides uniforms and vehicles. These vehicles (similar to FSO vehicles or Citizen Patrol vehicles), may either be based at a centralized headquarters office, or may be personally assigned vehicles (or even take home cars). Full time assigned vehicles are most common when a single advocate will be responsible for a wide geographic area such as a group of neighboring cities or an entire county during their shift.

Advocates provide overlap coverage with patrol units, but only during peak periods, for example from 4:00 p.m. to midnight Tuesday through Saturday. This model lessens costs to the advocate home agency as it requires fewer individuals (as few as one) for coverage; it also lessens the law enforcement agency obligation as to the number of vehicles required. Under this model, a single vehicle is usually stationed at a central location where the advocate will pick up the vehicle and return it at the end of their tour (similar to the Citizens on Patrol setup). The schedule under this model can be tweaked with assistance from Crime Data Reports to determine the optimal times and days that coverage is most likely to be beneficial.

Advocates maintain availability for 24 hour coverage, but remain based at their home program, providing services there and then responding as needed (for example via a pager system). This model severely extends the response time, limiting benefits to both patrol officers and to victims since it adds additional steps to the response process, requiring a responding officer to ask for an advocacy response and requiring law enforcement communications personnel to act to get the ball rolling. Second, it raises the question of attire; would advocates come to work at their home program in law-enforcement attire, then leave in their personal vehicle to go pick up a responder vehicle and THEN respond to the scene? If they are providing evening or overnight coverage based from home, would the home agency want to pay them to sit around at home, in uniform, in case they are called? Would the participating law enforcement agency be willing to provide a vehicle to be based at the crisis center office for use by responding advocates to address some of these issues? Can advocates self-monitor activity via an issued radio or must they wait for a request to initiate a response? (By way of example, many towing companies monitor what is happening over law enforcement radio, allowing them to make preparations or get rolling toward a scene as quickly as possible.)

A blended approach in use in some communities puts dual-trained advocates into patrol cars with officers. This approach most often works in smaller cities where a single officer can respond over a large percentage of the geographical coverage area or where the agency has a dedicated unit of officers who respond to all or most of the domestic violence calls, otherwise an officer in the north-west corner of a large jurisdiction may have to vacate their patrol area to shuttle their companion advocate to the south-east corner of the jurisdiction. Some patrol officers may not want to have an advocate partner; others, particularly those in dedicated domestic violence units, may welcome such an arrangement. However, this model compromises one of the key benefits to law enforcement because once the joint unit arrives on-scene, the responding patrol officer is stuck there for safety reasons until the advocate has completed services to the victim and family.

Additional Issues for Consideration:

The use of personal vehicles is not recommended due to visibility, liability, reliability, and other concerns. Are current vehicles available? If not, can one or more vehicles be obtained via donors, sponsors, joint funding efforts, etc.?

The use of uniformed responders is recommended to promote visibility, unification, and identification; not only for victims, but also for officers, particularly in large jurisdictions, who may not know or recognize advocates who suddenly arrive on scene.

Check insurance coverage at multiple levels (life insurance, liability issues) and ensure that high liability issues, such as confidentiality, are adequately addressed via a combination of training and policy/procedure.

Outline specific training requirements and curriculum (both advocacy and law enforcement levels) and establish a timeline: how long will it take to put an advocate in a response position?

Decide upon jointly-sanctioned materials for advocates to use/distribute. These same materials should be in use by ALL agencies within a jurisdiction (i.e. by all cities within a county and by that county's sheriff's office, state attorney's office, etc.). If your area has a Domestic Violence Task Force, all members of that group should have input as to the content.

Determine financial responsibility for providing these materials, timeline for production, and location(s) where materials will be located.

Evaluating a Multi-Disciplinary Response to Domestic Violence: The DVERT Program in Colorado Springs, Final Report (PDF)
Study of a comprehensive program which united 25 partner agencies that work together to protect victims including police officers and detectives, victim advocates, prosecutors, child service providers, probation officers, and health care professionals. September 2001. 108 pages.

Evaluation of a Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence: The Alexandria Domestic Violence Intervention Project - Final Report (PDF)
By Stan J. Orchowsky Ph.D., Applied Research Associates, Richmond, Virginia. Examines one agency to evaluate the provision of services to victims, the provision of services to batterers including court-ordered treatment, and the presense of active coordination between local police and prosecutors offices. Examines recidivism factors of offenders and attitudes of police officers regarding mandatory arrest policies. December 1999. 145 pages.

Legal Interventions in Family Violence: Policy Implications (PDF)
This publication contains "bottom line" information from articles written by researchers about their own work or in several instances about other researchers' work on subjects of immediate concern to practitioners: collaborative efforts between police and protection agencies, arrest policies, protection orders, battered women defense strategies, sentencing, batterer treatment, child sexual abuse, and children's testimony. From the National Institute of Justice and the American Bar Association. July 1998. 89 pages.

Model Domestic Violence Policy for Counties (Word document)
From New York State OPDV. This model domestic violence policy is offered as a tool providing additional guidance to county communities in their efforts to strengthen responses to domestic violence. Includes sections on: Definitions, Problem Statement, Purpose and Policy Statement, Guiding Principles, Employers, Criminal Justice, Legal, and Judicial Systems, Health Care System, Substance Abuse Treatment System, Child Welfare System, Mental Health System, Primary, Secondary, and Post-Secondary Education Systems. January 1998. 92 pages.

Additional Research

The Value Of Coordinated Community Responses

Brenda K Uekert. Criminology & Public Policy. Columbus: Nov 2003.Vol.3, Iss. 1; pg. 133.

Coordinated community responses (CCRs), established to promote batterer accountability and improve victim safety, can and do work; yet CCRs are difficult to implement where CCRs require two elements; first, key stakeholders must actively participate in the response; and second, the stakeholders must reach consensus on the most appropriate response to domestic violence in their communities. Uekert provides an essay, which is based on personal experiences traveling throughout the United States evaluating criminal justice programs that were funded by the Violence Against Women Act. Contact: American Society of Criminology.

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Last Updated: July 17, 2007

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