New York, NY – The National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice today announced the launch of the National Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Initiative(NIPVII) with a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women(OVW).
Click here to view The White House release.
NIPVII will work with three cities, to be selected as part of the demonstration pilot, to replicate a strategy that has shown dramatic impact on intimate partner violence in its initial implementation in High Point, North Carolina. Led by Professor David M. Kennedy, director of the NNSC, the initiative will include collaboration with the Battered Women’s Justice Project, the High Point Police Department, and theUniversity of North Carolina at Greensboro.
“We now have the opportunity to scale up David Kennedy’s remarkable work in reducing intimate partner violence," said President Jeremy Travis of John Jay College. "We are grateful to the Department of Justice’s OVW for their foresight in supporting this important effort."
The NNSC’s Intimate Partner Violence Intervention is designed to deter offending at the lowest level and earliest moment possible; relieve victims of the burden of responding to violence, and ensure their support and protection; and take special action to address and if necessary incapacitate the most dangerous offenders. In each of the three selected cities, the NNSC and OVW will work with a partnership of police, prosecutors, probation and parole officers, victims’ advocates, social service providers, and community members to adapt and support the strategy; create a framework for sustained implementation; and assess the project’s outcomes.
High Point – a city that had long been applying the NNSC’s principles to effectively reduce group violence, overt drug markets and other serious crimes, like robbery – launched the strategy in 2009. Since then, the city has shown consistently positive results. Intimate partner homicides have dropped dramatically – from 17 in the five years before implementation to two in the years since – alongside low overall recidivism, reduced victim injuries, fewer calls for service and overall positive responses from victims.
“This is one of the most satisfying pieces of work I’ve ever been involved in,” says NNSC Director David Kennedy. “When a man whose name we know is brutalizing a woman whose name we know, we should make him stop, not expect her to turn her life upside down. For the first time it looks like we can actually make that happen. With OVW’s support, we have the extraordinary opportunity to develop and test this approach nationally.”
The NNSC, a project of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was launched in 2009 under the direction of David Kennedy and John Jay College President Jeremy Travis. The NNSC focuses on supporting cities across the country in implementing proven strategic interventions to reduce violence and improve public safety, minimize arrest and incarceration, strengthen communities, and improve relationships between law enforcement and the communities it serves.
