Testing the Effects of New York's Domestic Violence Courts: A Statewide Impact Evaluation

The effectiveness of domestic violence courts to positively impact court processing, case resolutions, and recidivism is examined. If you are planning to implement a domestic violence court in your jurisdiction or are looking for ways to improve it, then you should read this report. This study found that court policies “varied widely across several domains, including specific accountability measures (i.e., use of various sanctions for noncompliance), victim safety and services (e.g., use of protection orders, linkages to victim advocates, and courthouse safety measures), use of offender assessment tools, orders to batterer programs, and orders to other types of programs (e.g., substance abuse or mental health treatment)” (p. v). Findings also show that among convicted offenders domestic violence courts significantly reduce the total number of re-arrests for any charge and for additional domestic violence charges.