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Coordinated Community Action Model

Mike Jackson

David Garvin

Publication Date: 2003

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Coordinated Community Action Wheel
• Social Service Providers
• Education System
• Employers
• Government
• Justice System
• Feedback

Acknowledgments

This Model demonstrates, in abbreviated form, ways communities can accountably act to support battered women and children, and hold batterers accountable for their behavior. It is not a definitive representation. This Model identifies heterosexual males as perpetrators, as they comprise 95% of the batterers in this country. This Model was developed by Mike Jackson and David Garvin with the feedback of over 115 reviewers. We are grateful for their input, and acknowledge the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project for the wheel format. Permission to reproduce is given if there are no changes and credit is given. To obtain an 18 x 24 poster of this Model, or to ask questions about the model, contact:

David Garvin
Email: dgarvin@csswashtenaw
Phone: 734.971.9781 ext. 329

Or simply print and mail the Poster Order Form from the Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County website.

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Coordinated Community Action Wheel

More information about each section of the wheel can be located in the sections below.

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Social Service Providers

1. Create accountable standards for batterer intervention services.
2. Not participate in conducting couples/marriage counseling in domestic violence cases.
3. Ask questions on violence between intimate partners as a regular part of interviewing/intake.

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Education System

1. Provide mandatory classes on conflict resolution and communication in elementary and secondary school (at appropriate developmental stages).
2. Create curriculum to address violence in homes and sex role stereotypes.
3. Provide students with a means to critically analyze battering within the context of our male dominated society, thus promoting future research, activism, and education about the issues of violence against women.
4. Redesign curriculum to include antisexist/nonsexist subject matter, information about gender roles/oppression/etc., and health and sex education.
5. Educate teachers, staff, and administrators in order to facilitate their delivery of information to students about what domestic violence is (it is not o.k. for dad to rip the wires out of mom's car) and when clearly defined, that domestic violence is a crime!!
6. Develop policies within the environment of the school which reinforce that battering is not tolerated and "young" batterers will encounter consequences on a school level regardless of whatever steps are taken, or not taken, through the legal system. These policies would keep in mind the priority of ultimately protecting the victim and to not re-victimize her in any way.
7. Educate students about dating violence and date rape.
8. Require teachers and professors to receive training on recognizing signs of domestic violence in students.

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Employers

1. Hold women's jobs for them even though being stalked may make them less productive.
2. Clarify the need to support women who are being battered and stalked on the job.
3. Prevent punitive action against, and protect the right to work of, survivors who are stalked in the workplace (that is, women get threatened with disciplinary action when their batterers phone/assault them/enter the workplace.)
4. Negotiate flexible hours and leave for battered women in crisis.
5. Develop accountable employee assistance programs for batterers they employ.
6. Develop policies and protocol to assist battered women who are employed and hold batterers accountable when they are employed.
7. Train supervisors to recognize signs of battered women in their employ.

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Government

1. Pass laws which vigorously and progressively punish all forms of men's violence (sexual harassment, etc.).
2. Pass laws which define battering as criminal behavior without exception.
3. Create mechanisms for speedy response to violations of injunctions or court orders.
4. Monitor and enforce accountability to their own laws.

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Justice System

1. Insert questions on domestic violence into bar exams.
2. Commute sentences of battered women who killed in self-defense.
3. Provide mandatory intervention for incarcerated batterers in jails and prisons, with accountable aftercare conditions upon parole/probation.
4. Make battery and rape criminal, as well as civil, violations of civil rights laws.
5. Enforce custody orders/injunction violations, etc.
6. Hold itself accountable by publishing statistics on numbers of domestic violence incidents such as # of arrests made, # of cases made, # of cases successfully prosecuted; # of cases resulting in incarceration, treatment, fines, and community service.
7. Hold attorney's ethically bound to refrain from persuading battered women not to prosecute.
8. Enforce all laws related to protecting battered women and children, and holding batterers accountable for their behavior.
9. Acknowledge the role of judges as the controlling power in the justice system and hold the judges accountable for their systems.
10. Refer batterers to long-term batterer intervention services. A one year intervention program seems to be the appropriate term.
11. Adopt a policy of mandatory arrest when probable cause exists that an act of domestic violence has taken place.
12. Charge and prosecute batterers in a manner that does not rely on the victim signing a criminal complaint.
13. Impose conditions on bond designed to promote the safety of the victim.
14. Refer batterers to specialized intervention programs.
15. Provide easy access to legal recourse for victims when a violation of a conditional bond takes place.
16. Send an offender to jail when he repeats, fails to complete intervention, or violates a conditional bond.
17. Investigate domestic violence cases as if victims will not cooperate.
18. Protect victims and their children, including with custody and supervised visitation orders.
19. Provide the mechanisms to legally retain batterers in intervention programs.
20. Develop and enforce accountability/ethics actions when victims rights are violated by the system.
21. Ensure gender fairness in courts.
22. (Civil justice system) Accountably place restrictions on child custody awards to batterers, and understand the need for supervised visitation.
23. Increase the number of hours of domestic violence intervention training received by police.
24. Allow testimony of prior history of assaults in court proceedings.
25. Require training on domestic violence for judges, attorneys, probation officers and court clerks. 26. Root out gender and racial bias toward women, African American attorneys, and battered women.

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Feedback

Who responded to the first draft:

We sent out over 450 letters soliciting feedback on our original wheel. We received responses from approximately 115 people. The respondents included batterer intervention specialists, judges, state coalitions against domestic violence, family therapists, public health workers, centers for nonviolence, mental health workers, battered women, battered women's service agencies, researchers, police, sheriffs deputies, battered women's advocates, nurses, mayors, social activists, feminists, drug and alcohol treatment therapists, family service staff, university professors, probation officers, high school teachers, photographers, ministers, attorneys, prosecutors, state attorney generals, family study centers, batterers, legal aid workers, social workers, psychologists, mens nonviolence centers, police trainers, authors, sociologists, sexual assault prevention and intervention center staff, physicians, expert witnesses and battered women's legal defense organizations.

Breakdown of responses:

Reviewers had the fewest comments regarding what employers should be doing, and the most for the justice system. The breakdown of comments is as follows (although "women" and "health care" were not on the original wheel, we received comments about them):

Justice System=49,
Education=47,
Men=40,
Government=36,
Social Service Providers=32,
Clergy=26,
Media=25,
Employers=24,
Women=23,
Health Care=16.

Concerns voiced by reviewers of the first draft: Feedback was mostly in agreement with our ideas, but there was concern that the original wheel was unclear, inconsistent and not understandable. There was also feedback that the wheel was "sexist" (meaning men-hating), contained "politically charged" terminology, "individualized" the issue of battering inaccurately, only addressed mens' violence against women, was not "practical," was not framed in a manner which said what people can do, instead of what they shouldn't do, did not address cultural diversity, "was a poor illustration of this concept," did not "appear to represent the complexity of system reform and community organizing behind accountability," "contained all kinds of buzzwords or just vague enough formulations to keep women hanging, hoping and battered for another 20 years," did not include many institutions in the community, and illustrated the invisibility of lesbian and gay battering by not mentioning it.

Our sincere thanks to these reviewers:

Adams, David - EMERGE Counseling and Education to Stop Male Violence
Ager, William F. - Twenty Second Judicial Circuit of Michigan
Allen Currens, Sherry - Kentucky Domestic Violence Association
Ashin, Brian - Ann Arbor Center for the Family
Baker, Lynda - Wayne County Department of Public Health
Beams, John - Center for Non-violence
Bennett, Debra - Gateway Community Services
Bicehouse, Terry - Women's Center and Shelter, Pittsburgh
Bledsoe, Trish - Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence
Bograd, Michelle - Writer
Branson, Dan - City of Ann Arbor Police Department
Bull, Patricia - PHB
Candy, Honest - Domestic Violence Project/SAFE House
Chiari, Kathy - Snow Health Center, Eastern Michigan University
Christopher, Yvonne - Office of the Mayor of Lansing, Michigan
Cohen, Jon - Men Ending Domestic Violence
Craft, Nikki - ACLU - Always Causing Legal Unrest
DeForest, Carrie - Acmi House
Dotson, Donna - Chelsea Arbor Treatment Center
Dowd, Michael - Pace University Battered Women's Justice Center
Doyle, Sue - Fifty Second Judicial District Court Probation
Driker, Elissa - Jewish Family Services
Dunbar, Mabel - Safe Shelter
Edleson, Jeffrey - Professor, University of Minnesota
Elliott, Phil - Jewish Family Services
Esposito, Courtney - Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment
Falkner, Kathy - Milan High School
Faller, Kathleen - University of Michigan School of Social Work
Ferratto, Donna - Photographer
Fink, Jane - Therapist
Fink, Jim - Washtenaw County Sheriff Department
Fortune, Marie - Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence
Foster, Robert - Domestic Abuse Counseling Center, Inc.
Fritsch, Travis - Office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Kentucky
Gibbens, Gary - AMEND (Abusive Men Exploring New Directions)
Gondolf, Edward - Mid-Atlantic Addiction Training Institute
Gwinn, Casey - Office of the City Attorney, City of San Diego
Hagstrom, Julie - Council Against Domestic Assault
Harway, Michele - California Family Study Center
Heggie-Baylis, Gloria - Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence
Henderson, Melinda J. - Wayne State University School of Medicine
Hickey, Mary - Wayne County Prosecutor's Office
Hollifield, Phil - Alternatives to Domestic Aggression
Hood, Mary - Legal Aid and Defender Association of Detroit, Civil Division
Howe, Katherine - Personal Dynamics Center
Huosiamaa, Lisa - director of DOVE in Ironwood Michigan DOVE - Domestic Violence Escape, Inc.
Jackson, Gail - Aurora Community Mental Health Center
Julian, Sue - West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Kelley, Bobbe - Henry Ford Hospital
Kensington, Sue - Women's Center of Marquette
Kessler, Barb - Kessler, Mullkoff and Hooperman
King, Jean - Attorney at Law
Kivel, Paul - Oakland Men's Project
LoSasso, Vicki - Nevada Network Against Domestic Violence
Lowe, Robert - Twenty Second Judicial Circuit Court Probation
MacLeod, Jeanne - Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence
Martin, Del - Author McClure, Bonnie - Sparrow Hospital
McKenzie, Brian - Fifty Second Judicial District Court
McQuiddy, Merry - 48th District Probation Department
Mendez, Linda - Bay County Women's Center
Mosteller, John - Center for Behavior and Medicine
Munaker, Judith - Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence
Newhouse, Emily - Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter Home for Abused Women, Inc.
Newman, Leslie - YWCA Counseling Center
Neylon, Nancy - Ohio Domestic Violence Network
Nichols, Margeret - Nichols, Sacks, Slank and Sweet
Osmundson, Linda - CASA - St. Petersburg,Florida
Parker, George - Fourteenth Judicial District Court Magistrate
Parks, Lynn - Family Violence Project
Patterson, Michael - Chelsea Arbor Treatment Center
Pence, Ellen - Domestic Abuse Intervention Project
Pesicka, Harlene - South Dakota Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
Platt, Connie - Colorado Domestic Violence Coalition
Pope, Charles - Fourteenth Judicial District Court
Rasco, Georgie - Oklahoma Coalition on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
Reese, Diane - West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Reeves, Judy - Texas Council on Family Violence
Rinker, Ron - Fifteenth Judicial District Court Probation
Rupe, Sharon - Fifty Second Judicial District Court Probation
Ruse, Diane - West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Sackett, Leslie - Eastern Michigan University School of Social Work
Saunders, Daniel - University of Michigan School of Social Work
Schoenberg, Ila - Catholic Services of Macomb
Sengstock, Mary - Department of Sociology, Wayne State University
Simonton, Gregory - First Judicial District Court Probation
Sosnick, Ed - Sixth Judicial Circuit Court Staff,
Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center
St. John, Katherine - Women and Children in Crisis, Inc.
Stempowski, Sue - Turning Point
Stickel, Sue - Eastern Michigan University Department of Leadership and Counseling
Stoltenberg, John
Superczynski, Carolyn - DARES - Domestic Assault Rape Elimination Services
Tambellini, Tammy - Western Upper Peninsula Substance Abuse Service Coordinating Agency Towery, Pam
VanAudenhove, Kristi - Virginians Against Domestic Violence
Vorenkamp, Corinne (and Vickie, Sandy, Sean, Lisa, Amy and Monica) - Women's Resource Center
Whisman, Pattye - Licking County Family Physicians, Inc.
Wilson-Schaef, Anne - Wilson-Schaef Associates, Inc.
Yashinsky, Ellen - Jewish Family Services
Zorza, Joan - National Battered Women's Law Project

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