"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan.

Over the last 30 years the criminal justice system has and should continue to play a role concerning criminal domestic violence intervention. There is little question that over the last 30 years many lives have been saved and some families have been made safer because of the criminalization of domestic violence.

However, there are obvious and painful problems with many policies and practices that continue to be ignored by the majority of domestic violence advocates and our public policy makers, both at the federal and state level.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report, Controlling Violence Against Women: A Research Perspective on the 1994 VAWA’s Criminal Justice Impacts should be mandatory reading for domestic violence advocates and public policy makers and it can be found online at http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/197137.pdf. This report concludes that: “Above all, they [public policy makers] need to know that their policies and practices will not endanger women [emphasis added]. Unfortunately, there are too few preventive impact evaluations of policies already in place and fewer still that approach methodological standards insuring sound data for shaping policy.”

It would be beneficial to many domestic violence victims if our policy makers read the above report. The fact is that our public policy makers have, once again, placed the cart before the horse. There are no evaluations in place, no methodological standards and no data that demonstrates that mandatory domestic violence policies and practices will not endanger some victims.

Further the above report notes that, “We still have much to learn about differences in offenders and differences in populations of victims to justify advocating one policy over another without qualifications.” This prudent and sensible advice has fallen on the blind eyes and deaf ears of many domestic violence advocates and public policy makers. Good intentions do not save lives.

Without evaluations in place, lacking methodological standards and without data to document they would not be harmful to some domestic violence victims our public policy makers have passed legislation that created mandatory reporting procedures, mandatory arrest, and no drop prosecution policies.

Often these policies and practices have the opposite effect on the victims they were intended to assist. Mandatory legal policies and practices have silenced domestic violence some victims and caused many to lose any and all control over their lives and the lives of their children.

Helpful For Some, Harmful For Others

Many NIJ studies document mandatory policies and practices and “one-solution-fits-all” criminal justice intervention processes have produced some unintended negative consequences. These mandatory polices and practices can save some lives and can make some families safer. However, at the same time data documents they can have negative effects and endanger some victims they are intended to protect.

Further troubling is the fact that a recent report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Forgoing Criminal Justice Assistance: The Non-Reporting of New Incidents of Abuse in a Court Sample of Domestic Violence Victims, documents that rigid mandatory interventions that ignore the diversity of the victim desires and that lack varied programs suited for the characteristics of multi-problem offenders can cause many victims to “opt out” of the system designed to assist them.

This report clearly documents that some victims who after being abused and becoming involved with the criminal justice system will not report future victimizations. This demonstrates that aggressive, one-solution-fits-all criminal justice interventions are, in some incidences, not only ineffective, they can prove to be more harmful than helpful for some victims who have been abused and then who are abused once again.

The Light Dawns

Now, at last, there is a feminist organization that agrees with the law enforcement officials. This organization lists its beliefs and values to be:

Our work is guided by our vision of a just and safe world where power and possibility are not limited by gender, race, class or sexual orientation. We believe that equality and inclusion are the cornerstones of a true democracy in which the worth and dignity of every person is valued.

This organization has concluded in its report, Safety & Justice for All: Examining the Relationship between the Women’s Anti-Violence Movement and the Criminal Legal System,  that our public policy makers have in fact, put in place policies and practices that do endanger some victims.

In fact this organization now has concluded that those who are being endangered most by these policies and practices are the very same victims who need help the most. This organization now believes that our public policy makers should abandon the use of mandatory legal practices such as mandatory reporting, mandatory arrest, and no drop prosecution policies.

This organization believes that many policies and practices that were intended to help victims have instead harmed many victims. They also believe that these policies and practices have eroded the rights of defendants, regardless of gender.

The one thing this organization, the Ms. Foundation for Women, does not note in their report is their continued refusal to accept some responsibility for implementing the practices they now oppose. The fact is that it was the Ms. Foundation organization, with many other women’s rights groups, that lobbied our public policy makers to put in place the very same policies and practices the Ms. Foundation now recognizes have harmed many victims, both women and men.

NIJ funded research is intended to help guide our public policy makers and perhaps they should also read the NIJ sponsored report, “Effects of No-Drop Prosecution of Domestic Violence Upon Conviction Rates” (NCJ Number 193235 at http://abstractsdb.ncjrs.org) notes that: “Finally, we do not know whether no-drop increases victim safety or places the victims in greater jeopardy. . . Before no-drop is embraced as a desirable policy, we owe it to victims to find out whether they are well-served by taking away their right to decide the extent to which they want to pursue a criminal justice solution to their problem.”

Another NIJ funded report that is important concerning legislation is The Exposure Reduction or Backlash? The Effects of Domestic Violence Resources on Intimate Partner Homicide. It suggests that: “The results for prosecutor willingness suggest that simply being willing to prosecute cases of protection order violations may aggravate already tumultuous relationships. . . Increases in the willingness of prosecutors’ offices to take cases of protection order violation are associated with increases in the homicide of white married intimates, black unmarried intimates, and white unmarried females.”

The National Research Council (NRC) report, Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women notes that researchers and scholars WHO DO NOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN VIOLENCE, ABUSE, OR BATTERING MAY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD. Few, if any domestic violence policies and practices passed by federal or state legislators make that important distinction.

The Ms. Foundation report suggests that many policies and practices put in place by our public policy makers continue to ignore the fact that many victims want, reclamation, rehabilitation, redemption, and restoration, rather than arrest and incarceration. Victims want their voices heard not silenced. They want their needs heeded, not ignored.

There are an ever-growing number of National Institute of Justice studies that document that some policies and practices are more harmful than helpful for some victims. The Ms. Foundation understands full well that some contemporary domestic violence policies and practices have a disproportionate, negative impact on some victims.

In fact, many of our domestic violence policies and practices are eerily similar to the mandatory drug policies and practices. It is more than ironic that progressives and liberals oppose the drug mandatory arrest and sentencing policies and practices because they have had a negative effect on the lives of many minorities and poor communities regardless of gender, race or ethnicity. Yet these very same people fail to understand the same thing is happening with mandatory domestic violence policies and practices.

The question for our public policy makers is quite simple. There are many public policy makers and domestic violence advocates who are more than willing to take the credit for making some lives safer. However, who among them is willing to take the responsibility for passing legislation that removes due process from both offenders and victims, silences the voices of victims and endangers the lives of many victims who live at the lower end of the socioeconomic educational strata and who lack the resources of family and friends and who need help the most.

There are many who continue to believe that these mandatory domestic violence policies and practices are necessary, because if they save only one life the effort is worthwhile. What these very same people are unwilling or are unable to understand is the fact that this philosophic belief demands that they also acknowledge that if these very same policies and practices take only one life, they are not worth the effort.

When families are made safer many domestic violence advocates and public policy makers are more than willing to step forward and claim responsibility for those polices and practices. When lives are endangered and harmed there is a deafening silence. No one can be found to take responsibility for the negative consequences.

Are not the lives of those who may be harmed by mandatory domestic violence policies and practices as worthy as those who may be helped?