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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 11:27 pm
Time: 11:27 pm
Results for police and domestic violence
2 results foundAuthor: Ajayi, Titilope Title: State Responses to Women’s Security Challenges: An Assessment of Ghana’s Domestic Violence Victim Support Unit – Lessons for Nigeria Summary: Violence against women (VAW) is violence that is committed against women because they are women. It affects an estimated 1 in every 3 women worldwide (United Nations, 2006), depriving them of ‘their ability to achieve their full potential by threatening their safety, freedom and autonomy’. VAW has important health, social, and economic consequences for survivors, their families, and the communities and countries where they live (World Health Organisation, 2009). In the face of high levels of VAW and sexual victimization in Nigeria, much of it perpetrated with impunity by security officials, the blatant dearth of state-sponsored support services has contributed to low levels of reporting and unequal access to justice. Civil society has advocated actively against this and provided support in the form of counselling, shelters, hotlines, training and other activities intended to enhance police capacity to handle VAW. The impact that has been made, such as the creation of a gender violence desk in the Ilupeju police station in Lagos, Nigeria, is limited due to a lack of resources and inadequate government support. For this reason, there is a need for more targeted and coordinated interventions within the framework of national level policy support that would be best provided by a national domestic violence (DV) bill that has been pending since 2003. Gender desks exist in some police stations in Nigeria. Yet uneven knowledge of their status and mandate, even among police personnel, calls into question their effectiveness and relevance. This disparity, juxtaposed with UNIFEM’s praise for the desks as a useful tool for addressing VAW, indicates that the issue needs to be revisited and leads this paper to recommend the reorientation and reintroduction, as appropriate, of VAW units within the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and set out guidelines for this project. Women’s police stations and units created within police stations to handle VAW are relatively recent and increasingly popular international phenomena recommended by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as appropriate and effective tools for combating VAW. In Africa, these units currently exist in Namibia (1993), South Africa (1995), Sierra Leone (2001), Lesotho (2003), Liberia (2005), and Tanzania (2008) with mandates to eradicate gender based violence (GBV), including against children, regardless of where it occurs. Established in 1998, the Domestic Violence Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) is one of a few in Africa set up exclusively to handle cases of VAW. Although it is not perfect and this approach is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution to the scourge of VAW, there are important lessons to be learned from DOVVSU’s experiences. In light of prevailing high rates of VAW in Nigeria, and as a complement to ongoing police reform efforts there, there is a strong case for establishing a similar unit within the NPF. This report distils these lessons in an effort to assist the NPF in tackling Nigerian women’s security challenges in a more coherent and lasting manner. Section two discusses some common ‘causes’ of VAW while section three outlines the general context of security in the countries under study. Sections four and five examine state and non-state responses to VAW in both countries with a focus on what has driven and sustained the DOVVSU in Ghana. A final section sets out guidelines for improving the NPF’s response to VAW based on lessons from Ghana. Details: Santiago de Chile: The Global Consortium on Security Transformation (GCST), 2011. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: New Voices Series, No. 11: Accessed April 4, 2011 at: http://www.securitytransformation.org/images/publicaciones/200_New_Voices_Series_11_-_State_Responses_to_Womens_Security_Challenges.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Africa URL: http://www.securitytransformation.org/images/publicaciones/200_New_Voices_Series_11_-_State_Responses_to_Womens_Security_Challenges.pdf Shelf Number: 121240 Keywords: Domestic Violence (Africa)Intimate Partner ViolencePolice and Domestic ViolenceRapeSexual AssaultVictims of Domestic Violence, Services forViolence Against Women |
Author: Mock, Lynne Title: Illinois Integrated Protocol Initiative Training Evaluation Report 2015-2017 Summary: Domestic violence is almost ubiquitous in Illinois. Illinois law enforcement agencies reported 118,160 domestic-related crimes in 2016 (Illinois State Police, 2017). The Illinois Family Violence Coordinating Council (IFVCC) has received several federal grants to improve prosecution rates, use of orders of protection, and public safety. IFVCC developed and provided training for police and other criminal justice practitioners to improve knowledge about domestic violence and apply this knowledge to support evidence-based approaches to prosecution. Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) researchers worked with IFVCC Program Director and Evaluation Working Group members to develop evaluation tools for the Council's training protocols and mini-tool kits. Training evaluations from law enforcement, probation officers, emergency services personnel, and 911 telecommunicators were collected and analyzed to determine their confidence levels in processing these cases, perceptions of the trainer and the training, beliefs in supervisory and collegial support for using evidence-based arrest and prosecution approaches, and retention of key information imparted during the training immediately afterwards. Overall, training participants provided positive feedback about the quality of training provided. Most participants reported a significant increase in confidence after the training and positively rated the training and trainers. While some were uncertain about the relevance of the training to their work, most rated the training as applicable. Participants showed significant increases in knowledge in most pre- and post-assessments. A 70-percent correct response rate was set as the minimum score required to demonstrate adequate knowledge of the material from the training sessions. More than half of the domestic violence training for law enforcement and emergency medical services staff participants met this standard, at 58 percent and 53 percent, respectively. Almost half of the probation personnel participants met this standard, at 47 percent. Policy implications explored continuing these trainings and setting specific goals for them. In addition, it would be important to monitor the fidelity of the training provided to insure an increase in investigations, orders of protections and evidence-based arrests. And, work is needed beyond the in-class training and into the workplace, where supervisors can show support for the use of the evidence-based practices and adopt them as standard operating procedure in their departments. Expanding the training modality to online webinar formats with technical assistance outreach would allow more training participation with cost savings in travel and training locations. Future research could involve an evaluation of the predictive reliability of the evaluation tools to show the extent to which new knowledge was adopted and useful in evidence-based prosecutions. Also, a study comparing standard practice to evidence-based prosecutions stemming from IFVCC training protocols and mini-toolkits would measure the effectiveness of the tools to support domestic violence arrest and prosecution. Details: Chicago: Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, 2018. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed Dec. 11, 2018 at: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/assets/pdf/IFVCC/IIPI_Training_Evaluation_Report_IFVCC_101818.pdf Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/assets/pdf/IFVCC/IIPI_Training_Evaluation_Report_IFVCC_101818.pdf Shelf Number: 153960 Keywords: Domestic ViolenceEvidence-Based PracticesFamily ViolencePolice and Domestic ViolencePolice Training |