Domestic Violence Safety and Accountability Audit
What is an Audit?
The Domestic Violence Safety and Accountability Audit, developed by Praxis International, Inc., is carried out by a local team to look at how work routines and ways of doing business in institutions and systems strengthen or impede safety for victims of battering. By asking how something comes about, rather than looking at an individual worker, an Audit discovers systemic impediments to and gaps in victim safety, and produces recommendations addressing the removal of those impediments and the closing of those gaps.
The Audit is designed to leave communities with new insights into victim safety, sharper skills in problem investigation and solving, and stronger relationships among community partners that can be applied to an ongoing review of its response to domestic violence. The Audit is founded on understanding how 1) a victim of battering becomes “a case;” 2) responses to that case are organized and coordinated in and across intervening agencies; and 3) complexity of risk and safety varies for each victim of battering.
Why conduct an Audit?
The Audit is intended to help communities work toward common goals of enhancing victim safety and ensuring offender and systemic accountability when intervening in domestic violence. Though changes have been made in criminal and civil legal responses to domestic violence, many institutions that intervene in domestic violence were not designed with the characteristics of battering in mind.
When a woman who is beaten dials 911 for help, she activates a complex institutional apparatus responsible for public safety. Within minutes, her call is translated into something that institutions can act on. Her experience becomes a domestic assault case. Over the day, up to a dozen individuals will act on her case. They hail from as many as five agencies and represent four levels of government.
Over the next year, the number of agencies and people who work with her case—and therefore her safety—will more than double. 911 calltakers and dispatchers, patrol officers, jailers, court clerks, emergency room doctors and nurses, detectives, prosecuting attorneys, law enforcement or prosecutor’s victim specialists, child protection services workers, civil court judges, criminal court judges, family court judges, guardians ad litem, therapists, social workers, probation officers, shelter advocates, children’s advocates, legal advocates, and support group facilitators may become involved in a chain of events activated by her call.
In the past 20 years, every state and hundreds of communities have initiated criminal and civil justice reforms improving victim safety and offender accountability in that chain of events. Laws have been changed, policies written, procedures revised, and training conducted. Domestic violence coordinating councils, task forces, and response teams have been formed. Are communities safer for domestic violence victims and their children? Are offenders held accountable for violence and coercion? Have our good intentions and reforms helped or hurt?
The Audit helps answer these questions from the standpoint of battered women and their children. It provides a unique and focused opportunity for a community to examine how domestic violence cases are handled in a system, and based on that analysis, implement improvements.
Who conducts an Audit?
A multi-disciplinary group of local practitioners are trained to serve as the Audit Team. Members are selected based on the focus of the audit, and so the size of the team varies. The Audit Team collects and analyzes data, and makes findings and recommendations which are summarized in a report.
How does the Audit team collect and analyze data?
To ensure a comprehensive look at victim safety, team members examine the processing of domestic violence cases at different points of intervention through interviews with and observations of skilled practitioners and analysis of the text they produce. Their knowledge of everyday practice and first-hand experience with people whose cases are being processed supply many of the critical observations and insights of the Audit. Depending on the focus of the audit, text analysis is conducted on police reports, case files, presentence investigations, and so on.
During data collection and analysis, team members pay attention to methods that institutions use to standardize workers' actions across disciplines, agencies, levels of government, and job function. These “Audit trails” point the way to problems and solutions; they include: rules and regulations, administrative practices, resources, concepts and theories, linkages, mission/purpose/function, accountability, and education/training.
Central to this work is the effort to see any gap in victim safety from a victim’s perspective and see how it is may be produced by case management practices. In discovering how a problem is produced, team members simultaneously discover how to solve it. Recommendations then link directly to the creation of new standardizing practices, such as new rules, policies, procedures, forms, and training.
Who may I contact for more information?
If you are an OVW “Grants to Encourage Arrest” grantee or wish to audit a criminal justice system response, please contact BWJP at (800) 903-0111, ext. 1 or email technicalassistance@bwjp.org.
If you are an OVW “Rural Program” grantee or wish to audit any other kind of system, please contact Praxis International at (651) 699-8000.
For additional general information on the safety audit process, outcomes, roles, and logistics, visit Praxis International. For reports from communities who have completed audits, visit PRAXIS International or the resources section of this website.
