Final Report on the Evaluation of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration: Executive Summary

• NCJ Number: 219386
• Author(s): Adele Harrell; Jennifer Castro; Lisa Newmark; Christy Visher
• Date Published: June 2007
• Length: 27 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1999-WT-VX-K005
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Award: Eval. of a Multi-Site Demon. for Enhanced Judicial Oversight

Annotation

This paper presents a summation of the federally supported Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) evaluation with findings from all three JOD sites (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Massachusetts).

Abstract

The evaluation points to the need for research in several critical areas: building stronger linkages between courts and NGO victim service providers, motivating offender compliance and desistance from violence using sanctions and treatment combinations, and changing offender perceptions of the risks of future violence, and identifying and addressing victim needs to ensure their safety and well-being. Highlights of key findings on the impact of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) are presented from three primary outcomes: victim well-being, offender accountability, and perceptions and revictimization. These highlighted findings include: (1) JOD increased community-based victim services, particularly in Michigan; (2) victims in all sites were generally satisfied with the response of police, prosecutors, and the court; (3) JOD increased victim contacts with probation agents; (4) JOD increased offender accountability, especially in Dorchester and Milwaukee; (5) JOD did not decrease perceptions of the fairness of judges and the probation departments; (6) JOD increased the perceived certainty or severity of penalties for violations of some court-ordered requirements; (7) JOD reductions in victim reports of repeat intimate partner violence (IPV) were stronger for some types of victims and offenders; and (8) offenders’ perceptions of legal deterrence predicted lower frequency of offender reports of repeat IPV. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice, Office on Violence against Women selected three sites for the implementation of the JOD (Dorchester, MA, Milwaukee, WI, and Washtenaw County, MI). In each of the communities, criminal justice agencies and community-based agencies serving victims and offenders formed partnerships to work collaboratively to support an effective response to IPV incidents. The evaluation objective was to test the impact of JOD interventions on victim safety, offender accountability, and recidivism and to learn from the experiences of well-qualified sites who built collaboration between the courts and community agencies to respond to intimate partner violence. Tables