Increasing Victim Safety and System Accountability: Evaluating a Collaborative Intervention Between Health Care and Criminal Justice, Final Technical Report

• NCJ Number: 201945
• Date Published: March 2003
• Length: 60 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2000-WT-VX-0020
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Technical)

Annotation

This document is a final technical report of a study on increasing domestic violence victim safety and system accountability based on a collaboration of health care and criminal justice agencies.

Abstract

The objective for this study was more safety-seeking behaviors, lower experienced violence, higher physical and emotional functioning, and less employment harassment among women that qualify for a protection order and receive the Advocacy-Case Management intervention as compared to women that do not receive the intervention. The two theories guiding the research were Walker’s three-phase cycle theory of violence and Curnow’s open window phase of help-seeking and reality behaviors. A two-group experimental design with an intervention using random assignment to control group (usual District Attorney procedures) or experimental group (Advocacy Case Management Intervention), and repeated measures at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months was used. The sample consisted of all women, 18 years or older, applying and qualifying for a protection order against a sexual intimate. The results show that adoption of safety behaviors significantly increased over time for women in the intervention group. The effect of the intervention was large at 3 months, remained substantial at 6 months, and then stabilized and remained consistent at 12 and 18 months. Slightly more than half of the women in the study completed the process of applying for and receiving a protection order. But the intervention group that received the advocacy case-management and assistance with their protection order processing received no more protection orders and in no shorter time than the control that received standard processing. There were significant differences in relationship status at intake between the women that subsequently received or dropped the protection order. 75 references