Overview

The Institute continues to offer this three-day, hands-on, highly interactive education workshop provided to 900 judges nationwide since 1999. The program provides the essential foundation for new and experienced judges who handle criminal, civil, and family law cases involving domestic violence.

Three workshops are scheduled in 2007 exclusively for judges and judicial officers (for dates and locations, see Upcoming Programs). At the three-day workshops all participant-judges will engage in practical courtroom exercises and lively discussions with their student and faculty peers. The interactive format, tailored to workshop participants' needs, will enable new and experienced judges to take home frresh ideas and techniques on how to handle difficult, complex issues in cases involving domestic violence.

Learning Objectives

Judicial participants will leave the workshops with greater knowledge and skills for handling cases involving domestic violence. Judges participating in the workshop will be better able to:

• Evaluate impact of violence on adult victims and children who witness violence.
• Identify the protection and restoration requirements of domestic violence victims.
• Describe patterns of batterer conduct, assess dangerousness of specific batterers, and impose effective intervention and accountability mechanisms for batterers.
• Resolve difficult evidentiary issues and apply an understanding of domestic violence to judicial fact-finding.
• Identify administrative and community barriers to accessing/achieving justice in DV cases.
• Devise methods of overcoming barriers to justice, become motivated to work to remove barriers, and use information regarding available community resources to assist in removing barriers.
• Recognize and apply ethics, rules that govern participation in extrajudicial activities, e.g. domestic violence councils, legislative proposals, local court rulemaking, and education programs of non-judge providers.
• Define culture and cultural competence, enhance respect for the dynamics of difference, and identify ways in which culture is relevant in the courtroom.
• Recognize cultural misinformation and avoid assumptions about a person or facts of a situation based on misinformation.
• Identify and evaluate protential biases that might influence courtroom demeanor or interpretation of facts and making of decisions in DV cases.
• Identify common decision-making points where understanding DV might affect how you make decisions and what you decide.
• Draft and issue effective orderst that (a) stop violence, (b) protect adult victims and children, (c) require appropriate batterers treatment in criminal and civil DV cases, and (d) facilitate enforcement in DV cases.
• Assess the impact of domestic violence on cases involving sentencing, custody and visitation issues.
• Evaluate batterers intervention programming and information regarding appropriate treatment/intervention options.
• Identify the potential benefits of conducting review hearings (in conjunction w/probation services) to monitor batterer conduct in DV cases.

To download a brochure click here.

Family Violence Department - (800) 527-3223 or (800) 52-PEACE
Fax (775) 784-6160 - Wash. DC (202) 558-0026 - fvdinfo@ncjfcj.org