known for violating human rights; law enforcement cannot be effective in addressing violence against women as long as the broader police force has a reputation for abuse.

# **Institutional reform of police, the judiciary, forensic medicine, and legal aid**

The example of Zambia highlights the need to go beyond legislative reform by strengthening key law enforcement institutions, including police, the judiciary, the forensic medical system, and legal aid. Even in countries with strong legal systems, law enforcement institutions have historically responded to intimate partner and sexual violence with bias, neglect and mistreatment. For example, in Britain, researchers noted that police and judges often minimized the criminal nature of gender-based violence and expressed bias against victims of sexual abuse until serious reform began in the 1970s (Morley and Mullender, 1994). In middle and low-income countries, law enforcement institutions often face a severe lack of resources for personnel, equipment, training, and transportation. Many legal systems are plagued by police corruption, expensive, slow and inaccessible courts, and an unaccountable judiciary (Human Rights Watch, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003a, and 2003b).

A growing number of low and middle-income countries have tried to improve the law enforcement response to gender-based violence by training professionals, reorganizing police and courts, and trying to provide a more comprehensive response to survivors. Evidence of effectiveness is relatively limited; most well-evaluated initiatives come from high-income countries, and the lessons learned may not be applicable to developing countries. Evaluations of law enforcement reforms in low and middle income countries have typically been limited to case study approaches drawing from police records (notorious for under-reporting), qualitative perspectives from key informant interviews, intermediate outcomes such as changes in attitudes and knowledge among police and judges, and interviews with small numbers of women who have sought legal redress. Population-based data collection, control groups, or follow-up among more than a handful of survivors are rare. Nonetheless, the following initiatives illustrate the types of efforts that have produced important lessons learned.

# **_Training personnel in the police and judiciary and other parts of the justice system_**

Throughout the world, organizations have launched efforts to improve the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of justice sector personnel regarding gender-based violence. Some law enforcement institutions organize training internally, as did South Africa following passage of the 1998 Domestic Violence Act (Usdin et al., 2000). In other settings, NGOs such as Rozan in Pakistan (Rashid, 2001), Profamilia in the Dominican Republic (Guedes et al., 2002), and the Musasa Project in Zimbabwe have trained law enforcement personnel on issues related to gender-based violence. Elsewhere, governments have collaborated with the United Nations to provide training and support for the police and judiciary. For example, ILANUD is a joint institute of the government of Costa Rica and the United Nations that works with governmental agencies throughout Latin America to improve the work of prosecutors, judges, lawyers, police and other professionals in criminal justice generally, and gender-based violence specifically (Villanueva, 1999; ILANUD, n.d.). Most of these initiatives have been evaluated using key informant interviews and pre and post questionnaires before and after training-if they have been evaluated at all. Nonetheless, training appears to be both constructive and urgently needed (Rashid, 2001; Villanueva, 1999). Other lessons learned include the finding that changing attitudes of law enforcement is a challenging, long-term process. The quality of the trainings’ content and the skills of the trainer are essential. Training appears to be most effective when all levels of personnel (especially high-level officials) participate, and when training is backed up with changes throughout the institution, such as policies, procedures, adequate resources, and continual monitoring and evaluation.

# **_Special police stations or cells for crimes against women_**

All-women police stations began in Brazil and were later tried in other countries in Latin America and Asia. As of 2003, for example, Nicaragua had 17 police stations for women and children (called 21