U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Duluth: A Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence (From The Multi-Agency Approach to Domestic Violence: New Opportunities, Old Challenges?, P 150-168, 1999, Nicola Harwin, Gill Hague, et al., eds. -- See NCJ-187541)

NCJ Number
187551
Author(s)
Ellen Pence; Martha McMahon
Date Published
1999
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This chapter profiles the development, structure, and operations of the Duluth Model (Minnesota) of criminal justice intervention in domestic violence cases; the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) is a pioneer in coordinated community responses to domestic violence.
Abstract
The activists who organized the Duluth DAIP in 1980 had little on which to build. There was no role model of "reform coordinator." Practitioners in the various agencies in Duluth allowed the DAIP to fill that role. Currently, the issue of who will organize inter-agency reform efforts has become a far more contentious one, as actors from within the legal system, for example, take up the banner of reform and inter-agency reform councils. This chapter describes DAIP's work by outlining eight activities, which the DAIP viewed as the essential elements in reorganizing the community's legal and human service intervention, so as to make victim safety the central goal. The key activities of the Duluth Model fall under one or more of its eight objectives. These objectives are to create a coherent philosophical approach that centralizes victim safety; to develop "best practice" policies and protocols for intervention agencies; to reduce fragmentation in the system's response; to build monitoring and tracking into the system; to ensure a supportive community infrastructure; to intervene directly with abusers to deter violence; to undo the harm violence to women does to children; and to evaluate the system's response from the standpoint of the victim. 2 notes and 9 references