Judges play a critical role in managing offenders' behavior and keeping victims safe.
Judges, prosecutors, police, probation officers and victim advocates must work together to ensure victim safety. Law enforcement and probation officers, prosecutors, victim advocates, batterer intervention programs and the judiciary will establish and implement community-wide protocols, which treat domestic violence as a crime and strengthen the monitoring of perpetrators. They can create specialized domestic violence dockets or courts, improve comprehensive services for victims that promote safety and autonomy and create data collection systems for the judiciary that include the defendant's history of abusive behavior. These funds will also be used to create a county-wide domestic violence unit. This unit will include domestic violence prosecutors, investigators, probation officers and victim advocates who will work closely with batterer intervention programs, domestic violence units within police departments and the county's victim advocacy organization.