Overview of 2010
Dual Arrests at Record Low; Requests for Protection Orders Drop 12%; Demand for Victim Services Remains High
The two most significant trend stories in 2010 were the continuing decline of dual arrests and the significant drop in requests for protection orders and continued decline in approvals for protection orders.
A dual arrest occurs when both parties in a domestic violence investigation are cited. Dual arrests are seen as a key indicator of law enforcement response to domestic violence because domestic violence theory holds that a key element of the relationship is a significant power imbalance. As a result, domestic violence theory suggests that in most cases, one party is acting in self-defense and the other party is the predominant aggressor. Nebraska law passed in 2004 reflects that good investigations in most cases should determine the predominant aggressor.
In 2010, there were only 29 dual arrests, down 29% from a record low total of 41 in 2009. In the first year of the coordinated response to domestic violence project, 1996, there were 176 dual arrests.
The drop in dual arrests is one of several major changes that have occurred over the past 15 years. The following table compares 1996 baseline figures with 2010 outcomes. All represent trends that have continued during this period:
1996 / 2010Dual arrests / 176 / 29
Assault arrests / 1,315 / 896
Number of offenders committing 2 or more offenses in year / 196 / 90
Percent of arrests being custodial arrests / 43% / 81%
Number of perpetrators sentenced to jail / 126 / 310
Number of offenders attending men’s domestic violence program (*programs got under way in 1997) / 37* / 501
Number of nights shelter provided by Friendship Home / 12,458 / 26,278
Requests for protection orders / 751 / 1,092
See pages 6-7 for criminal justice system highlights and Appendix B, pages 10-18, for criminal justice statistics.
Requests for Protection Orders drops 12%; Percent of requests becoming 1-year domestic abuse protection orders drops again
The number of requests for protection orders declined by more than 12% in 2010 compared to 2009. The total of 1,092 requests in 2010 was the lowest number requested since 2001.
The decline in requests accelerated a change that began in 2008 when requests for protection orders dropped slightly after. Prior to 2008, requests for protection orders had risen steadily, with record highs set in 5 of the previous 7 years.
A total of 654 domestic violence and 438 harassment POs were requested in 2010. The decline in requests was greatest for harassment orders, with 16.5% fewer requests.
At the same time, approvals of one-year protection orders also dropped in 2010. The downward trends are coincident with a change in Nebraska law that took effect in 2008. The change in law required that a show cause hearing must be held if the domestic violence protection order was granted ex parte. Ex parte means that a judge has reviewed the request for a protection order and made a ruling on whether to grant the order short term until a hearing is held.
At the hearing, the person who has had a protection order granted against them must show a reason (a cause) why the order should not remain in place. Prior to the change in law, it was rare for a show cause hearing to be held if an ex parte order was granted and most orders granted ex parte “ripened” into 1-year protection orders without a hearing.
Nebraska has two kinds of protection orders: domestic abuse and harassment. To get a domestic abuse protection order, the person seeking the order must have been in a qualifying relationship. For harassment protection orders a pattern of conduct must be established between any two people that meets the requirements of the law. Show cause hearings are not required for harassment protection orders in the same manner as domestic abuse protection orders.
In some cases an ex parte order is denied, but a hearing is still held. The following table shows the change for domestic abuse protection order requests:
Year / Protection order requests / Requests granted ex parte / Show Cause hearings / Total 1-year orders granted / Pct of requests becoming 1-year orders2006 / 746 / 524 / 72 / 543 / 73%
2007 / 786 / 521 / 74 / 547 / 70%
2008 / 741 / 489 / 308 / 445 / 60%
2009 / 720 / 390 / 519 / 279 / 39%
2010 / 654 / 378 / 466 / 238 / 36%
The table shows a significant increase in show cause hearings – from below 100 prior to passage of the law to more than 500 in 2009.
At the same time, the percent of requests becoming one-year orders has dropped from about 70% to 36%. Whether this is because of the law change and/or some other reasons or reasons is uncertain.
Beyond the law change, a Nebraska Court of Appeals ruling in 2009 may have impacted the ability to get protection orders. This ruling, Cloeter v. Cloeter, involved the meaning “physical menace” and “imminent” bodily injury in Nebraska’s Protection Order Act. The court took a more narrow view of the law than had previously been practiced, stating that “physical menace” requires more than words and that imminent requires the ability to carry out a threatening act immediately. A protection order had been granted, but the Appeals Court overturned that ruling.
For information on protection orders see page 7 for highlights and Appendix C, pages 19-23.
Demand for victim services remains high
The need for most victim services remained high in 2010 with the notable exception of requests for protection orders.
Voices of Hope surpassed 2,000 face-to-face unduplicated clients for the second time in three years with 2,099 clients served. Voices of Hope client contacts ranged between 1,600 and 1,900 from 2002-2007 and now have ranged between 1,950 and 2,100 for the past three years.
Friendship Home had 646 requests for shelter in 2010 and provided 26,278 bed nights of service.Bed nights measure how many nights a woman or her child was in a bed in shelter. The number of requests for shelter was the highest number ofrequests since 2001. The number of bed nights was down slightly from a record total of 26,672 in 2009.
For additional information on victim services, see Appendix A on pages 8-9.
2010 Program Highlights
Outreach project to improve response for Latina and African American women
A federal Grant to Encourage Arrest Policies and Protection Order Enforcement received in 2004 by Lancaster County resulted in the hiring of bilingual advocates and other staff at the Friendship Home, Voices of Hope,Nebraska Center For Legal Immigration Assistance, El Centro de las Americas, and the Lincoln Police Department Victim/Witness Unit.In 2010, this grant was renewed for an additional two years.
These partners, along with the Family Violence Council,have met regularly to improve the coordinated response to Latina and African American victims of domestic violence. This has resulted in a substantial increase in services to Latina and African American victims of domestic violence. This includes establishing support groups for Latinas and African American women.
The project seeks to increase contacts with victims of domestic violence by improving trust through outreach activities. In 2008, the project exceeded 1,000 Latinas and African American women served – the first time the project exceeded 1,000 served. The project has continued to serve more than 1,000 victims including 1,236 in 2010. In 2005, the first full year of the project, a total of 547 victims was served.
Another highlight of the project has been an annual conference focused on African American experiences. The 2010 conference featured Dr. Terri Pease from the NationalCenter on Domestic Violence, Trauma & Mental Health in Chicago. The conference drew 91 attendees.
Keepers of the Flame
In 2010, the outreach and services project to the Latinas and African American women was into the Keepers of the Flame project. Funding for this project was received in a two-year federal grant awarded to El Centro de las Américas.
Other partners include the MaloneCommunity Center, Asian Cultural and Community Center and the IndianCenter along with Friendship Home, Voices of Hope and the Family Violence Council.
The project initiates outreach activities through the IndianCenter and expands existing efforts with the three other cultural centers.
Outreach activities were expanded to the Asian Community and Cultural Centers in 2009 through the community’s coordinated response grant from the Nebraska Crime Commission. In 2010, federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds available through the Nebraska Crime Commission also supported this outreach activity. These funds also supported considerable training to support the community’s coordinated response, including the cultural center outreach projects.
Southeast Nebraska Training, Response and Outreach Consortium
In 2009, domestic violence/sexual assault programs in southeast Nebraskareceived federal funding for the Southeast Nebraska Training, Response and Outreach Consortium (SENTROC).The $750,000 grant was awarded to the Crisis Center in Fremont.
The Family Violence Council serves as project manager for the project which includes Voices of Hope and Friendship Home along with Project Response in Nebraska City, which serves counties in southeast Nebraska, the Crisis Center in Fremont, which serves counties north of Lancaster County, and the Hope Crisis Center in Fairbury, which serves counties to the west and southwest of Lancaster County.
The focus of the grant is for the organizations to combine their expertise to improve training and increase outreach to key community partners in responding to domestic violence. The grant focuses on outreach to educators, health care professionals and to religious communities.
The grant allows project partners to continue an effort that began in 2003.This project has also provided advocacy, transportation, shelter and victim services to increase access to safety for rural victims and their families.
Victim Services highlights
Friendship Home
Friendship Home provides safe shelter and supportive services for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. FH takes a strengths-based approach to working with battered women and their children that addresses both domestic violence and homelessness.
In 2010, FH provided emergency shelter and/or supportive services to 1,481 women and children; providing 26,278 bed nights of emergency shelter to 665 women and children. The average length of stay in emergency shelter was 38.06 days, and 96% of families sheltered reported incomes that placed them at or below the 2010 federal poverty thresholds. Upon checking out of emergency shelter in 2010, 98% of women reported they had a better understanding of domestic violence, and 94% stated they knew more ways to plan for their safety.
Other accomplishments in 2010 include:
- In 2009 FH expanded its Economic Empowerment Program through the support of the Allstate Foundation and the use of their Moving Ahead Through Financial Management curriculum. An advocate is dedicated to facilitating the Economic Empowerment group for residents in our two emergency shelters, as well as providing individual support to residents seeking guidance on financial matters. The Allstate curriculum has also been incorporated into our "Self Economic Empowerment-Drawing on our Strengths" (SEEDS) support group. In 2010, 95 women in emergency shelter attended the Economic Empowerment Program and 44 women in Transitional Housing attended the SEEDS group, for a total of 748 group counseling hours.
- Continued success of the Hestia Project-the innovative program of pairing highly trained student interns with paid staff as a method to staffing our emergency shelters. In 2010, 38 interns and volunteers helped staff our emergency shelter facilities, providing 5,775.75 hours of service (2.78 FTE’s),for a total of 31,237.75 hours of service since the inception of the program in 2004. The success of this program directly correlates to the provision of all 50 emergency shelter beds.
- Continued provision of transitional housing and supportive services through a Federal Transitional Housing Assistance Program grant. Women and children participating in this program receive transitional housing (in collaboration with the Lincoln Housing Authority), and enhanced supportive services provided by FH’s Transition Team. Using FH’s “Strengths-Based Approach,” this team focuses their work on advocacy, goal setting, information, referrals and support as women work to gain economic independence from their batterer and self-sufficiency. They provide information/referral and advocacy for securing housing, employment and/or education resources; help women set financial goals; and provide support on household management and single parenting issues. FH opened its seventh transitional housing unit in February of 2009, thanks to a partnership with the Eastridge Presbyterian Church. The Church offered the rental of a 3-bedroom home for use as a transitional housing unit. This opportunity has increased FH’s transitional beds from 31 to 37, allowing additional opportunities for women in shelter to enter the Transitional Housing Program.
- Continued development of the Children in Shelter Project.This Strength-Based Approach, initially used to work only with women in shelter, is structured around The Gallup Organization’s Clifton StrengthsFinder™ (for adults) and StrengthsExplorer™ (for children age 10-14) assessment tools. A strength-based curriculum has been developed to work with children as young as five, which include strength-based activities that can be used individually or in group settings.
- Ongoing collaborative work with CenterPointe, St. Monica’s, Voices of Hope, Lancaster County Community Mental Health Center, to create a shared response protocol and identify strategies to overcome significant barriers to safety for victims of domestic abuse who experience persistent mental health concerns and/or substance abuse issues. This partnership is supported by a federal Education, Training and Enhanced Services to End Violence Against and Abuse of Women grant.
Voices of Hope
In 2010, Voices of Hope continued its commitment to providing 24-hour a day emergency services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, including the crisis line (475-7273), and 24-hour-a-day advocacy in response to calls from hospital emergency rooms and law enforcement for assistance with victims. VOH also offers daytime walk-in services Monday through Friday and Wednesday evenings, assistance with safety planning, assistance filling out and filing protection orders, basic needs provision, and limited financial assistance.
Offering 24-hour a day crisis intervention services provides an ongoing challenge to VOH. The crisis line is answered by staff members as well as trained volunteers. To ensure an adequate number of volunteers, VOH offers volunteer training three times a year. Each session provides 34 hours of training on the issues of domestic violence, sexual assault, incest, stalking and related issues and involves many opportunities for role-playing to prepare volunteers for the calls they will receive on the crisis line.
In addition to its crisis intervention services, VOH also offered drop-in support groups for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, including a group for Spanish-speaking individuals and one for African American women who are or have experienced violence in their relationships.
VOH also offered several special focus time-limited support groups in 2009, including DV101, an educational groups to victims of domestic or dating violence who are parents and have children who are witnessing this violence; an ACCESS group, which is a career counseling group for women who have experienced emotional and/or physical abuse from an intimate partner, and Women Write Reality, a group where women can express their thoughts and feelings through writing poetry, their personal stories and journaling.
VOH had a bi-lingual advocate on staff to ensure services are available to Spanish-speaking individuals and to facilitate the Spanish speaking support group. In addition, VOHused interpreters as needed to assist with victims who spoke Arabic, Pharisee, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Chinese, Russian and other languages. Several information materials were available in both English and Spanish, and work began to translate them into other languages as well.
VOH also recognizes how oppression and lack of tolerance can often compound violence toward women and children. To help VOH address this reality, it has formed formal cooperative projects with El Centro de las Américas, the AsianCommunityCulturalCenter, and ClydeMaloneCommunity Center. In addition, VOH had two bi-lingual advocates on staff. VOH provided bi-lingual advocacy or interpreters to Spanish, Arabic, Pharisee, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Chinese, Bosnian and Russian speaking clients this year. Our general brochure and safety plan are available in English and Spanish.
VOH worked with many partnerships in the community in 2010 to help ensure victim safety, including FH, Fresh Start, Catholic Social Services, El Centro de las Américas and the AsianCommunityCulturalCenter.
In 2010,VOH continued providing services to students, faculty and staff at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln through a contract with UNL that allows for a VOH advocate to provide services on-campus at the Student Union. VOH’s on-campus advocate also provided training for residence hall assistants on responding to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and gave several presentations on campus to student groups, sororities, and faculty groups to raise awareness about the availability of services on campus.
Criminal Justice highlights
Number of participants in men’s domestic violence programs remains high
For the first time, more than 500 men attended domestic violence intervention programs in 2010. A total of 501 men were enrolled at sometime during the year. This figure includes some men who also attended programs in 2009 or 2011.
The number of unduplicated attendees was the second highest total at 342. The record number was set in 2007 with 364. A total of 326 men attended in 2009. These figures include only participants who either completed the program or were discharged from the program in the calendar year. The programs last at least 24 weeks.
Here are some other statistics:
Arrests (pages 13-15):
- The number of investigations for an assault in 2010 totaled 1,492 resulting in 896 arrests. A total of 266 protection order violation investigations resulted in 135 arrests. So, total arrests amounted to 1,031, a slight decrease from 1,047in 2009.
- Not counted in the assault totals are investigations for sexual assaults involving intimate partners. In 2010, there were 19 such instances. One resulted in an arrest.
- In 2010, 22% of those arrested for a domestic assault were women, down from 24% in 2009. In 2007, this figure rose to 24.5%, the highest total in several years. The 2005 figure of 20.4% was the lowest figure since FVC began tracking domestic violence in 1996.
- Of those arrested in assault investigations, nearly 81% were lodged. In the first year of the project, 1996, only 43% were lodged. In recent years, the rate had ranged between 50% and 60% until 2008 when it jumped to 75.6%. In 2009, the rate was 76.8%.
Prosecutions/Sentences(pages16-18):