Sometimes the plan involved working with the district attorney to prioritize a suspect for prosecution or notifying the suspect’ s probation officer. In other situations( ongoing verbal abuse, or crimes with little evidence) Agent Rosario met with the victims, suspects, and people with influence over the offenders such as parents and siblings, to try to stop the behavior. In one instance, Agent Rosario worked with a severely disabled suspect who physically abused his wife even though he was confined to a wheelchair. To remind the suspect that police would continue to check on her safety until the violence stopped, his wife taped a project flier to their bathroom wall with a note to that effect. The victim told Agent Rosario that the situation eventually improved to the point that she was able to take the flier down.
Positive Outcomes
• During the six months after the project was in place for a year, Domestic Violence crime went down 24 % in the test area; during the same period there was little change in Domestic Violence crime in the comparison area
• 88 % of people involved in verbal-only Domestic Violence calls said things had gotten better since the police response
• 92 % indicated they would call police again for help
• 97 % of Domestic Violence victims in the test area were satisfied with the police response
• The project has led to additional efforts. For example, the San Diego County District Attorney’ s Office has partnered with the San Diego Sheriff’ s Department on a new focused deterrence initiative. ■
Additional project information is posted at: https:// tinyurl. com / y8omo2ro
* Pseudonym This project was supported by Grant No. 2013-DB-BX-0033 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U. S. Department of Justice.
1
The 24 % reduction was statistically significant at the 99 % confidence level.
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