Web resource:	http://www.courtinnovation.org/_uploads/documents/T_V_Court_report.pdf
Type:	Electronic publication
Title:	Bringing domestic violence best practices to New York’s town and village courts
Authors:	Cissner, Amanda B
Keywords:	Standards;Criminal justice responses;Training;Regional rural and remote areas;Specialist courts;Legal issues
Topic:	Policing and legal responses
Year:	2007
Publisher:	Center for Court Innovation
Notes:	General Overview: :While the domestic violence court movement has successfully spread across the United States, many rural jurisdictions still find it difficult to implement the best practices of the specialist court model. To address some of these difficulties, the Center for Court Innovation, in partnership with the Office of Court Administration’s Town and Village Resource Center and domestic violence stakeholders, developed a training program for local justices in eleven rural town and village courts in Tompkins County, New York. This article describes the training project and reports on to what extent domestic violence policies and practices were implemented in the town and rural courts, prior to and following the delivery of the training. Discussion: :The two-part training series took place in 2006 and covered the dynamics of domestic violence, the principles of victim safety and offender accountability, best practices in domestic violence courts, and the role of the local Integrated Domestic Violence Court. Nineteen justices from the eleven town and village courts participated in the training. To inform the design of the training and its evaluation, and to identify the existence of domestic violence policies and practices, the local justices were asked to complete a series of four surveys: In addition, a smaller group of justices participated in interviews. Data was collected through court observations, interviews with staff at the Tompkins County Integrated Domestic Violence Court, and interviews with local victim advocates. The project identified inconsistency, misinformation and missing information as critical issues for the rural town and village courts. Key findings included that: * most justices made victim service information available in their courts, although victim services advocates reported that justices rarely made referrals to services. The author attributes these inconsistencies to time and resource constraints on the local justices, as well as a tendency to rely on traditional practices. Overall, the justices responded positively to the training program. However, their practices remained largely unchanged after completing training. On this basis, the article concludes that more targeted outreach to local justices, which goes further than traditional judicial training efforts, is required to encourage them to take up domestic violence best practices in their courts.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/21227
Physical description:	18 p.
Appears in Collections:	Online resource

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