Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (58 page)

Realigning the Focus

Victim Involvement in Supervision

It is important to answer the following questions when developing a domestic violence probation strategy:

• What was the reason for passing a domestic violence law on our reservation?
  
• Was it to increase the workload of law enforcement and the court?
  
• Was it to provide more offenders for probation to supervise?
  
• Or was it because our women were being battered and abused at an alarming rate?
  

The social and criminal injustice evidenced by the numbers of Native women suffering at the hands of those who profess to love them was the force behind such laws. The resources available under the Violence Against Women Act made it possible for tribes to finally address this problem. Correcting the injustice requires that the focus of all agencies be on the safety of the women we serve instead of on our individual procedures.

Since law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges adjust to new laws, priorities, and procedures, probation departments and probation officers need to make adjustments as well. Probation strategies must adapt to address the specific behavior these new laws are designed to correct. But how do we best monitor and correct that behavior?

Unlawful behavior is easy to spot when it is reported to police and becomes a crime. Domestic violence, however, is characterized by a pattern of conduct by which one individual exercises power and control over another. In that cycle of abuse, most of the violence occurs outside the view or knowledge of the police. So, who in law enforcement can actively monitor that behavior to make sure the violence and abuse are not still occurring? Probation officers develop the type of contacts over time with the offender that can identify and curtail recurring abuse and violence.

To concentrate on the behavior of the offender, probation officers need to make the probation term an ongoing investigation of the offender’s behavior. Probation officers have the ability to become more involved with probationers. They also have the administrative authority to make offenders accountable for a wide range of behaviors and activities that do not fall within the jurisdiction of law enforcement.

Probation officers must be quick to address even the smallest infraction with immediate sanctions. Offenders will test whether the probation officer and the tribal court are serious about holding him accountable. The first sanction should be to extend the offender’s term of probation to an additional year of supervision, if possible. This reinforces the importance of compliance and demonstrates how serious the court and the tribe view the offender’s behavior. This may also temper any rage he may feel later after he finally realizes that his supervision is a reality and not merely an inconvenience.

Probation officers must be prepared to use all of their resources to investigate and monitor offender behavior during the probation term. This includes establishing and maintaining effective lines of communication with those who know the offender best, including his victim. This approach does not only require safety checks with the victim, it also entails promoting a relationship in which she feels comfortable speaking with the probation officer anytime.

Often probation officers get caught up in official function and do not consider the impact of probation activities on the victim and her children. For example, a probation officer may feel an offender needs alcohol treatment as soon as possible, and can then pursue other programming needs. Getting the offender into treatment, in the long run, should be beneficial for him, the victim, and their children. However, does the officer take into consideration the welfare of the victim, presuming to know what is best for her? That is very arrogant and condescending. The officer has taken the place of her batterer in trying to control her life. What if the offender is a seasonal worker and the sole support of his family and the officer plans to send him to treatment during his employment season? Has he stopped to think how this will affect his family? Who will feed them and provide for them while he is, in the words of one victim, “off discovering himself”? A probation officer must take the time to obtain the woman’s input.

Often an ill-timed probation requirement or activity can place the victim at greater risk of violence, or sabotage the offender’s rehabilitative programming. For example, if the probationer’s main excuse for his violence was jealousy, sending him away from his family for thirty to sixty days might not be the best strategy. He has convinced himself that she is just waiting for an opportunity to leave him for someone else, so not knowing what she is doing may trigger violence when he returns or he may become distracted and not benefit from the rehabilitation. Knowing what makes him tick by talking to his partner may minimize those situations. She may help develop more effective programming strategies.

Victim “safety checks” should be in-person. She is a real person and not just part of a procedure. She will be impacted by any supervision decisions the officer makes. In person the probation officer can also pick up on her body language any indication that she may be hiding an incident of the offender’s inappropriate behavior or an undisclosed fear:

Battered women are often very attuned to their partners’ moods as a way to assess their level of danger. They focus on their partners’ needs and “cover up” for them as part of their survival strategy. Battered women’s behaviors are not symptomatic of some underlying “dysfunction,” but are the life-saving skills necessary to protect them and their children from further harm.
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Even if safety checks are done for their safety, many women will not relish visits from their partners’ probation officer. They may not be willing to discuss their fears and concerns.

A safety check should never change into an interrogation of the woman or the allegation that she is “covering” for the offender. The probation officer must realize that any evasion, denial, or half-truth elicited from the victim is part of her survival strategy. Being truthful and informative with her is imperative. She may never feel fully able to trust or confide in her partner’s probation officer, but she needs to know, through repeated efforts by that officer, that she can come to him or her if she is in danger or has concerns.

If anything appears amiss during the visit with the woman, it should be part of the ongoing investigative function of the probation officer to find out which of her partner’s behaviors has made her afraid or wary. Ask her what is wrong, but do not expect her to answer right away, or at all. No matter how a woman responds to probation safety checks, it still sends a direct message to her batterer that someone is watching and checking on his behavior.

Keeping the safety of the victim as the focus of the supervision has a twofold purpose: observing the offender’s behavior and validating the woman in the eyes of the community. Probation officers have noted that the community seems to report subsequent violence or abuse more readily when the woman is recognized as a crime victim. Also, community members will report an activity to a probation officer more readily than they will report to the police.

Establish a system of contacts with those people who are involved regularly with the probationer and his victim. Develop a close working relationship with the victim’s advocate. Her advocate will often be the safest conduit for the victim to keep in contact with probation. Others who can serve as contacts to the victim can be family members, friends, counselors, or other service providers.

No matter the source, any report of physical threats, death threats, or suicide threats by the offender should be immediately shared with police. The threat constitutes an immediate danger to the offender’s partner and should be followed by immediate efforts to get him into custody.

Lethality Assessments

There are many lethality assessment tools in use and practitioners disagree on which is the most effective. Regardless of which tool is used, some type of assessment must be done to document the potential for further violence by individual offenders. The assessment should also be a key determinant in adopting a specific probation case strategy for each offender. Assessments should be ongoing throughout the probation term:

Some batterers are life-threatening. While it is true that all batterers are dangerous, some are more likely to kill than others and some are more likely to kill at specific times. Regardless of whether or not there is a protection order in effect, one should constantly evaluate whether an abuser is likely to kill his partner, other family members, and/or police personnel . . . It is important to conduct ongoing assessments, no matter how many times the abuse has occurred or no matter how many times police have been called to the same household.
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Use the assessment to determine the likelihood and possible severity of future violence against others by the offender. Any recent escalation in the frequency and severity of violence should automatically indicate a high-risk status, which should trigger the need for increased supervision and other measures to provide for victim safety.

Risk assessments are not an exact science. No measure of lethality has been found that takes into account all the variables of individual personality, individual history, and situation. The best a probation officer can determine is a general likelihood of continued or escalating violence. In order to establish these tendencies, the probation officer must first rely on available information, past history, and his or her own experience working with domestic violence offenders.

Courts and probation departments are constantly trying to establish scientific and measurable criteria in this area. Some jurisdictions require the use of an established assessment tool to give the court a basis for special conditions, high bail amounts, or added victim safety measures. Existing lethality assessment tools range from a subjective checklist
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to more rating-based tools, such as the Woman Abuse Scale,
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Conflict Tactics Scale,
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Field Assessment Danger Risk Factors,
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Spousal Assault Risk Appraisal Guide (SARA),
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and Partner Abuse Prognostic Scale (PAPS).
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Whether a probation department utilizes one of these tools can depend on policy, or whether the department can afford the cost of the software and/or materials.

Although these more widely used assessment tools differ in format and rating system, each concentrates on the victim’s perception of risk and the offender’s history of violence as basic determinants of lethality. In the absence of a formal assessment tool, probation officers can still provide an informed perception of lethality and prepare an initial strategy for probation:

Case Assessment: Assessment activities include both offenders and victims. Offenders are told that victims will be contacted by the probation officer initially and throughout the supervision period. Victims’ accounts of the violence are heard as credible and used as a basis for making case decisions. Victims are advised during the assessment process, and subsequently, of their rights and actions they may take to increase their safety. All family violence offenders are initially classified as high-risk and assessed for substance abuse problems.
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In the interest of safety, all domestic violence offenders should be initially classified as high-risk for lethality, especially in the absence of established jurisdictional standards or accepted use of any specific assessment tool.

Safety of Sources

Confidentiality is vital to protecting victims against retaliatory violence. Any information gained about the offender’s behavior can be used by the offender as an excuse to inflict further injury and abuse on his victim. When held accountable for his behavior, he will usually first assume that the victim has “betrayed” him, giving him what he feels is a reasonable justification for retaliation against her. If the source is not the victim, the offender may still retaliate against whoever gave the probation officer the information. Probation officers should always be aware that confronting the offender with any information, gained from any source, might result in violent retaliation.

Probation officers do not need to disclose the source of their information to the offender. Confronting him with what this person or that agency said about him works in movies and television cop shows for dramatic affect, but it is not good technique for a probation officer. If a probation officer puts one source at risk, all available informational sources may be afraid to volunteer information. Feed the mystique and his uncertainty. Declining to reveal sources of information enforces the idea that everyone is watching him and that the probation officer has access to every aspect of his life.

Keep in mind that no one lives completely outside the observation of others. Just because something happens behind closed doors does not mean that others are not aware that something has happened. Often separate versions of an incident may be provided to the probation officer, whether by family, friends, neighbors, children, neighborhood watch members, law enforcement workers, or the victim herself. Details of each version help to create a picture of what happened, and the overall picture of what happened is what the officer uses in the interview with the probationer to confront him on his behavior.

Before the offender can worry about where the information came from, the probation officer can press for an answer from the offender and lock him into a response. If he denies that anything happened, the officer can ask about specific details of the incident. If certain details, such as a loud argument or breaking glass, could have been heard and reported by almost anyone, it will be very difficult for the offender to deny that something occurred or determine the source of the information.