Massachusetts’ Simple Solution for Preventing Domestic Homicide

[IdaBriggs]

I love this. LOVE IT. (bold is from me)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/07/15/massachusetts_figured_out_a_simple_solution_to_prevent_domestic_homicide.html

Massachusetts’ Simple Solution for Preventing Domestic Homicide

In theory, domestic homicide should be easy to prevent, since men who kill their wives or girlfriends (85 percent of victims are female) generally give us lots of warning by beating, stalking, and even raping their victims, usually for years before they finally kill. In reality, it's surprisingly hard to stop someone who really wants to murder you, especially if he has easy access to a gun. Restraining orders don't create a magic force field around the victim. Shelters help, but they are underfunded and depend on the victim giving up substantial rights to hold a job (which gives the abuser the ability to find you), have a social life, or even speak to family members. And trying to figure out which abusers are just run-of-the-mill woman batterers and which will actually kill is surprisingly hard to do.

Rachel Louise Snyder, writing for the New Yorker, details one solution that's being implemented in Massachusetts. Domestic violence social workers there developed a high-risk assessment team that, using statistical methods and employing the court system in creative ways, has figured out a way to target the men most likely to kill and take special care to make it that much harder for them to do so. Kelly Dunne started the Domestic Violence High Risk Team in 2005, and since then, not a single case she's taken on has ended in murder, and the men who have been sentenced to GPS tracking have not committed any future acts of violence. In addition, the team has done wonders to help victims return to normal life:

(snip)

How do they do it? They take the details of each reported case of abuse, looking at risk factors such as stalking and chronic unemployment, and rate each abuser on a point system for how violent and controlling he is. Men who are rated high are then subject to heightened risk monitoring, and their victims are given extra resources to stay safe. If the abusers start acting up, they can have their child visitations terminated or be made to wear GPS trackers. They may even be put in jail or in a psychiatric hospital for violating probation or restraining orders—courtesy of a preventive detention program that was mostly used to prevent gang or drug violence in the past, a program that gives the government leeway to restrain you even if your behavior otherwise falls short of the threshold to charge you with further crimes.

The system works in no small part because it turns the logic of an abusive relationship on its head. The abuser works by making the victim feel like she will never be free of him, his violence, and his surveillance. If she tries to leave, he escalates. If she gets a new boyfriend, he escalates. The idea is to make her feel like her choices are to submit or to live in terror. The high-risk teams shift the burden of being surveilled from the victim to the abuser. Now, if he makes a threat, Massachusetts has the power to escalate. If he uses visitation time to attack her or her children, Massachusetts restricts visitation. Now he's the one who has to make his decisions with the understanding that someone with power can further restrict his movements and his ability to live freely. Abusers often victimize for years before taking things to the level of a serious beating or murder. By restricting movements in the early stages, it appears that the program helps keep abusers from getting to that point.

It's such a simple principle and one that hopefully other states will pick up on: The person who should pay for the abusive relationship should be the perpetrator, not the victim. It's not just the fair and moral way, but it also seems to be more effective.

From the referenced article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/07/22/130722fa_fact_snyder

A Raised Hand
Can a new approach curb domestic homicide?
by Rachel Louise Snyder

Dorothy Giunta-Cotter knew that someday her husband, William, would kill her. They met in 1982, when he was twenty and she was fifteen: a girl with brown eyes and cascading dark hair. Over the course of twenty years, he had kidnapped her, beaten her, and strangled her with a telephone cord. When she was pregnant with their second child, he pushed her down the stairs. After visits to the emergency room, he withheld her pain medicine and, at one point, forbade her to wear a neck brace.

Dorothy and William had two daughters, Kaitlyn and Kristen. Once, in a rage, William sat on Kristen’s chest until she couldn’t breathe; she was eleven. Another time, angered by what she was wearing, he hit her repeatedly in the head. That day, Dorothy took Kristen from their home, in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and drove to a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Maine. (Kaitlyn, who was seventeen, stayed behind in order to graduate from high school on schedule.) Dorothy feared that William knew the local network of domestic-violence shelters; in Maine, she felt, she would be safe.

There she filed a restraining order, telling the judge that her husband would kill her when he found her. But the judge denied the order, citing a lack of jurisdiction. So Dorothy returned with Kristen to Massachusetts, where she met Kelly Dunne, who worked at the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, a local domestic-violence agency. The center helped Dorothy file a restraining order and found a room for her and her daughters in a longer-term shelter. But Dorothy refused. She told the center’s lawyer, “If I’m going to die, I want to do it in my own house.” . . .

(more at link - ON EDIT: Second link is behind a password/member wall - sorry! )

[jollyreaper2112]

1. I know the reaction

Nanny state interfering with a man's right to dispose of his property as he sees fit.

I'd love to see the system rolled out on a national level.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Sadly, it uses "math", "science", "evidence" and

other "tricks" that would not be accepted by many other states.

[kestrel91316]

3. This should be mandatory and a FEDERAL law.

[Nay]

4. Now there's a novel idea! Make the violent person bear the brunt of the bad behavior! If only

I thought this could be done in every state....

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

[jtuck004]

6. "...not a single case she's taken on has ended in murder, and the men who have been sentenced to GPS

tracking have not committed any future acts of violence"

Just thought that bears repeating...

Thank you for posting this.

[davidn3600]

7. Shouldnt this also apply to any female offenders?

The article says 15% those who die from domestic violence are men. And then makes no other mention about it. Pretty typical, abuse on men is heavily downplayed and ignored. I'm shocked they even mentioned a statistic. Usually its just a straight up "Men are all abusers, women are all victims" type of article.

And what about homosexual relationships where abuse is occurring? What if you have two lesbians where one is abusing the other?

[IdaBriggs]

8. 85 Women - 15 Men. Everyone is important.

The article is about what works. Right now, the people they have tried it on are women in life threatening situations. Hopefully they will expand the program.

[pipi_k]

9. Good question...

your last sentence.

There's a case going on now in Northampton in which one partner in a lesbian marriage killed her wife


http://www.advocate.com/crime/2013/03/15/first-married-lesbian-murder-case-mass-ends-hung-jury