by Aurora Curtis, attorney in New York City, NYPD (retired)
In New York City, 52 homicides in 2020 [as of December 22] were the result of domestic violence. This is 12 percent of all homicides in the city during that calendar year. While this is down from 19 percent of all New York City homicides in 2019, the decrease in total percentage is simply an unfortunate consequence of the city’s rise in violence. Domestic violence, perhaps more easily than other murder, can be prevented.
The high-risk model of domestic violence response implemented by the U.S. state of Massachusetts in 2005 has successfully prevented further violence and domestic homicides. This model coordinates domestic violence social workers, law enforcement, and the courts to form a high-risk assessment team that targets the men most likely to kill their partners. Since this program began, the number of women entering shelters dropped from 90% of high-risk cases to 5%, and zero high-risk cases since 2005 have ended in homicide.
The Massachusetts Model makes the abusers pay the price for their violent acts, not the victims.
There are common risk factors among domestic abusers who are likely to kill their partners. Domestic Violence High-Risk Teams created an algorithm that assess variables such as stalking, choking, death threats, and chronic unemployment. These differentiate high-risk abusers from lower-risk ones. The high-risk abusers are then monitored more closely, and their victims given extra security and follow-up from law enforcement. With this intervention program, these abusers are targeted and stopped by the criminal/legal system before they can cause further harm to their victims.
Other U.S. jurisdictions, such as Maryland, have adopted similar programs, and they too have been successful at reducing incidents of violence. The tools these programs utilized to successfully combat violence against women appear simple, yet they are the opposite of conventional domestic violence policy and practice.
The Massachusetts Model makes the abusers, not the victims, pay the price for violence. Under traditional domestic-violence intervention models, victims suffer not only harm at the hands of their partner, but are also risk their jobs, homes, and privacy by entering the legal and emergency shelter systems.
How the Domestic Violence High-Risk Response Model Works
In 2005, the staff of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center in Newburyport, Massachusetts implemented a new tactical model of domestic violence response following the 2002 murder of one of their clients. As is too common, the abuser perpetrated many years of domestic abuse and violated multiple restraining orders before finally killing his victim. This high-risk model centers on identifying the abusers most likely to kill their partners, and then proactively intervening. The Domestic Violence High-Risk Team coordinates the efforts of their agency with those of local police departments, hospitals, health care providers, prosecutors, the courts, and even the state legislature, to prevent domestic violence homicide.
To determine whether an abuser is high-risk, the team turned to the work of Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor and public health nurse at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and the associated Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on violence against women. Campbell’s 2003 study, “Assessing Risk Factors for Intimate Partner Homicide” and her 1986 “Danger Assessment” became key diagnostic tools for the team to determine which of their cases were at high risk of homicide. The tool is based on a victim’s answers to weighted yes or no questions regarding such things as whether the frequency and severity of violence has increased in the past year, whether the abuser has ever threatened to kill the victim, whether he has ever stalked her< whether he drinks heavily or used drugs, and whether he has ever choked her. A Danger Assessment score of eighteen or more represented extreme danger; fourteen to seventeen was severe danger; eight to thirteen indicated increased danger; and anything less than eight signified variable danger.
There is a also a predictable timeline along which the risk of violence spikes: when a woman attempts to leave an abuser and/or when there is a change such as a pregnancy or a new job. For the most part, the danger is highest for three months after a couple splits, decreases slightly for the next nine, and is significantly lower after a year.
What differentiates the Massachusetts Model from traditional response plans is that it uses the abusers’ own logic against them: if an abuser escalates against his victim, the State escalates its response in kind. Instead of waiting for the abuser to become more violent, the State now reserves the right to act preventively and proactively. For example, if an abuser has a gun license it will be revoked automatically. If the abuser misuses his visitation time, the State can revoke child visitation rights.
If an abuser escalates against his victim, the State escalates its response in kind. Instead of waiting for the abuser to become more violent, the State now reserves the right to act preventively and proactively.
The State can make the abuser wear a GPS tracker which triggers an automatic alert to the police and the issue of an arrest warrant for violating his restraining order if he gets too close to his victim. Restraining orders are shields rather than swords, and at any rate are only as good as the responsiveness of the law enforcement personnel and the legal system backing them up. If the abuser violates a retraining order, which approximately 40% of abusers do, the Massachusetts Model allows him to be put in a detention facility for temporary holding pending what is called a “dangerousness hearing.” Judge may order an abuser to be held until trial if the abuser is deemed to be a sufficient threat to his victim or community.
Of course this is a tricky and even problematic constitutional issue, as the Constitution does not allow for the punishment of prospective behavior. However, holding an abuser before trial provides victims with time to relocate and perhaps save some money, thereby interrupting the “arrest-release-further-abuse” cycle that is too typical in the traditional model. Detaining the abuser also prevents him from contacting his victim and threatening her into not cooperating with the prosecution.
Of course, none of these favorable outcomes have turned Massachusetts into a utopia in which domestic violence is a thing of the past. Legislators and service providers are still attempting to make the state less hospitable to domestic violence by introducing legislation that would mandate stricter sentences for repeat offenders, shield the names of victims from the press (similar to rape shield laws), and introduce tougher sentencing for certain acts, like choking, which is a indicator future lethal domestic violence.
Maryland reduced its domestic violence homicide rate by 34% over five years with its Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence. This state-wide strategy to prevent domestic violence homicides enlisted a broad range of first responders and community outreach workers, including police, nurses, health clinics, and faith leaders to help identify women who are at the highest risk and immediately connect them to domestic violence services.
The high-risk model is effectively a sea-change in domestic violence response. The interests of abused women tend to be negatively impacted in the traditional response models. To escape her abuser, a woman is often forced to leave behind her home, her place of employment, and sometimes even her name. Shelters are often the last resort for a woman who is fleeing violence, but they are often not open to transgender women, or to boys over the age of twelve. This puts transgender women and women with teenaged sons in an impossible situation where they must either stay with their abusers, face homelessness, or give up their children in order to enter a shelter.
The Massachusetts Model can and should be expanded to more locales, provided that it is tailored to those locales’ unique socio-legal context and societal and community needs. This includes mitigating the impact such a program is likely to have on people living in poverty and on minority communities. To be successful, care must be taken to avoid violating the rights of domestic violence offenders, which might necessarily mean fast-tracking domestic violence offences in the courts and changing the manner in which preventive detention is used.
If we are serious about reducing violence, a High-Risk Domestic Violence Response model should be implemented in all jurisdictions. The success of this program lies in the combination of efforts and information-sharing by service providers working in every aspect of domestic violence response, and in proactive intervention based on risk assessment for escalating violence.
Works Cited
Benson, Michael L. and Greer Litton Fox. “When Violence Hits Home: How Economics and Neighborhood Play a Role.” U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Justice in Brief, Sept. 2004: 4-5.
Campbell, J.C., Webster, D. W., & Glass, N. E. 2009. “The Danger Assessment: Validation of a lethality risk assessment instrument for intimate partner femicide.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24, 653-674.
Campbell, J. C., Webster, D., Koziol-McLain, J., Block CR, Campbell, D., Curry, MA, Gary, F, Sachs, C. Sharps, PW, Wilt, S., Manganello, J., Xu, X. 2003. “Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a multi-site case control study.” American Journal of Public Health, 93, 1089-1097.
Green, Ariana. “More States Use GPS to Track Abusers.” New York Times, May 9, 2009: A10.
Miller, Joshua. “Bill seeks to shield domestic violence victims.” The Boston Globe, July 15, 2013.
Riley, David. “Middlesex DA Ryan seeks action on domestic violence.” The MetroWest Daily News. July 10, 2013. Retrieved from Web December 11, 2013.
Rosenfield, Diane L. “The High Risk Team Model and GPS Offender Monitoring: Stopping DV in Its Tracks.” Domestic Violence Report Vol. 17, No. 3, February/March 2012: 34.
Snyder, Rachel Louise. “A Raised Hand: Can a new approach curb domestic homicide?” The New Yorker, July 22, 2013: 34-41
United States. White House. “Factsheet: The Obama Administration’s Commitment to Reducing Domestic Violence Homicides, ” 2013: 1-2. Retrieved from Web November 14, 2013.
_____
Aurora Curtis is an attorney in New York City, where she represents children in abuse and neglect cases. She is licensed in New York State and Ontario, Canada. Prior to law school, she was a police officer in the NYPD from 2001 to 2012.
