Final Report on the Evaluation of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration Volume 1: The Impact of JOD in Dorchester and Washtenaw County

• NCJ Number: 219382
• Author(s): Adele Harrell; Lisa Newmark; Christy Visher; Jennifer Castro
• Date Published: June 2007
• Length: 359 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 federally supported report presents the methodology and sampling utilized in the impact evaluation of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) initiative in Massachusetts and Michigan to improve victim safety and offender accountability in intimate partner violence cases.

Abstract

The Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) initiative set out to learn from the experiences of well-qualified sites which were given resources to collaborate between the courts and community agencies to respond to intimate partner violence (IPV) and to test the impact of JOD interventions on victim safety, offender accountability and recidivism. Since its beginning in 2000, the courts in Dorchester, MA, Milwaukee, WI, and Washtenaw County, MI, have worked in partnership with their prosecutors’ offices, victim service providers, batterer intervention programs, police, probation, and other community agencies to promote these goals. This research report presents chapters one through three (Volume 1) of a six chapter report on the impact of the JOD focusing on evaluative methodology and sampling. The results of the impact analysis are presented in Volume 2, examining the success of JOD in attaining JOD’s primary goals. Chapter 1 begins by describing the methods used in the impact evaluation surveys of victims and offenders. Chapter 2 continues with a brief overview of the prior research findings on responses to IPV that are related to the primary elements of the JOD model: coordinated community response, proactive law enforcement/protection orders, specialized prosecution, and domestic violence courts. This chapter is intended to provide context for the findings from the national evaluation of JOD. Lastly, chapter 3 summarizes the methodology for the impact evaluation findings. It describes the study design and methods used to collect and analyze the data and results analyses of the representativeness and comparability of the JOD and comparison samples. Tables, attachments A-F, and references