NCJ Number
204532
Editor(s)
Joan A. Kuriansky J.D.
Date Published
January 1998
Length
87 pages
Annotation
This document describes North Carolina’s Protocol Development Summits, which generated a comprehensive assessment of the State’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking.
Abstract
North Carolina’s Protocol Development Summits emerged in an effort to assess the best way to apply the U.S. Department of Justice’s STOP Formula Grant Program. The goal of the STOP grant program is to encourage State and local jurisdictions to coordinate and strengthen responses to violence against women. To facilitate statewide coordination, the U.S. Department of Justice required STOP grant recipients to convene multidisciplinary planning committees to develop an implementation plan for the STOP grant monies. North Carolina’s policymakers took that opportunity to generate a comprehensive assessment of the State’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking. The first section of the report offers background information about the STOP Formula Grant Program, while the second section reviews North Carolina’s response to violence against women prior to the STOP grant implementation. North Carolina’s laws pertaining to domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking; its services for victims of sexual assault, stalking, and domestic violence; and its practices in law enforcement, prosecution, and the courts prior to 1995 are discussed. The third section describes the Domestic Violence Protocol Summit, which included a multidisciplinary training component. The planning of the Summit, the budget, speakers, work sessions, and outcomes are discussed. The fourth section describes the Sexual Assault Protocol Summit, which was similar to the Domestic Violence Summit with changes made to reflect the differences in the criminal justice response to sexual assault. The general theme of each summit was to promote and find ways to sustain a coordinated response to violence against women. The fifth section discusses implications for other States that emerged from North Carolina’s experience. Issues pertaining to leadership, geographic boundaries for response teams, length of the summit, and how to maximize the experience of the Summit emerged as possibly instructive for other States. Finally, the sixth section offers several conclusions from the Summit, including the fact that official responses to violence against women should emphasize victim safety and autonomy, should hold offenders accountable, and should employ state-of-the-art practices to implement a coordinated multidisciplinary response to violent crime against women. Figures, attachments