e deterred by written limits††† so police are advised that more must be done in these cases.
† In most jurisdictions these are obtained from civil court; however, some jurisdictions also grant concurrent jurisdiction to criminal court. Criminal courts can also issue these once a criminal proceeding begins.
†† Civil restraining orders were in fact developed to counter the reluctance of police, prosecutors, and criminal courts to treat domestic violence as a serious criminal matter (Buzawa and Buzawa, 2003).
††† For a good review of the research about protective orders, see Buzawa and Buzawa (2003).
† The rationale for “no-drop” policies is that the state has an independent interest in seeing domestic violence offenders prosecuted because of the harm caused to victims, victims’ children, and potential victims.
†† Victim recanting remains high. As a result, many prosecutors rely on physical evidence such as photographs and medical reports of victims’ injuries and out-ofcourt statements (e.g., 911 call tapes of in-progress assaults) to counter uncooperative and fearful victims. For an excellent review of prosecutorial response to the increased numbers of domestic violence cases and studies of prosecutorial case screening practices, see Buzawa and Buzawa chapter 11 (2003).
“No-drop” policies have some drawbacks. Victim discretion is further reduced, case backlogs increase, and time to disposition is lengthened, which can strain resources devoted to pretrial victim safety. The increase in prosecutorial workload can force prosecutors to trade off the prosecution of other crimes for misdemeanor battering. It is now apparent that prosecutors in “no-drop” jurisdictions rarely prosecute all cases; they retain some level of discretion in case filing decisions, typically at the intake and case screening point. Police must therefore help prosecutors identify the most severe and chronic cases from among the many arrests and encourage prosecutors to prosecute such cases vigorously, make special efforts to protect the victim,† and publicize convictions so as to maximize the general deterrent effect.
† See Problem-Specific Guide No. 42, Witness Intimidation, for further information on measures to protect victim-witnesses.
†† Some of these courts are termed “problem-solving” courts, but the term in this context should not be confused with its meaning in problem-oriented policing. Problem-solving in the court context refers to solving the individual defendant’s personal problems that contribute to his offending rather than to addressing an aggregation of incidents. See National Center for State Courts (n.d.).
Typically in specialty courts a single judge works with a community team to develop a case plan for the defendant and uses pending criminal sanctions to compel a defendant’s compliance with treatment. The judge monitors compliance and imposes criminal sanctions if the defendant fails to keep to the case plan.
Early evaluations of domestic violence courts generally report on how these courts handle their workload, victim satisfaction, and issues of implementation. It remains unclear if these courts impact recidivism. Researchers who examined these courts in New York describe some of the more important unresolved issues:
Many domestic violence advocates are hesitant to embrace the idea that domestic violence courts are “problem-solving courts.” There are substantial differences between domestic violence courts and other problem-solving courts. Many of these differences stem from how success is measured and to whom services are offered. Drug courts can easily look to see whether defendants are successfully completing their court-mandated drug-treatment programs. But domestic violence courts are not targeted at “rehabilitating” defendants. Indeed, services are offered primarily to help victims achieve independence. The primary “service” offered to defendants is batterers programs. But in New York, batterers programs are used by domestic violence courts primarily as a monitoring tool rather than as a therapeutic device. This approach is bas