The 10th graduation of the Harlem Reentry Court featured a special guest.

“I was born in Harlem, and I grew up in Harlem and now at 82, I’m still in Harlem,” said Harry Belafonte, the singer, actor and activist, as he congratulated the Reentry Court’s 17 graduates on satisfying the program’s rigorous requirements.

The Harlem Parole Reentry Court helps parolees returning from incarceration make the transition from life in prison to responsible citizenship. The court—a project of Harlem Community Justice Center, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and the Division of Parole—links parolees to a wide range of social services, including drug treatment, transitional employment and vocational services, health care and mental health treatment.

In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses the history, trends, and current innovations in the abusive partner intervention field with Juan Carlos Areán, program director of Children and Youth Programs at Futures Without Violence. They highlight the Abusive Partner Accountability and Engagement Training and Technical Assistance Project, a collaboration between the Center for Court Innovation and Futures Without Violence to help communities enhance their responses to people who cause harm through intimate partner violence.

The following is a transcript of the podcast:

We talk about that intergenerational cycle of violence but there's such thing as the 

intergenerational cycle of love and we don't talk about that so much. To change that, to change 

that legacy is not only to change it on your children, but it's changing it in many generations to 

come. 

Rob Wolf: I'm Rob Wolf at the Center for Court Innovation with a new episode of In Practice, our podcast that tells the stories of practitioners -- people who work in or closely with the justice system, who are trying to make the system live up to its name, that is, make justice, more just. Today we're going to talk with a national leader in efforts to respond to domestic and intimate partner violence. Juan Carlos Areán, is a program director in Children and Youth Programs at Futures Without Violence. For the past two years, Juan Carlos has been working with the Center for Court Innovation and other organizations to enhance intervention programs for abusive partners. 

As part of this project the Center and Futures have developed guiding principles for this kind of programming and Juan Carlos has also hosted a series of podcasts, looking at abusive partner intervention programs from various angles. As a leader in the field, he has numerous areas of expertise, including the intersection of fatherhood and DV, cultural approaches to end violence, and curriculum writing. He was previously the director of the National Latino Network at Casa de Esperanza and the Sexual Assault Prevention Specialist at Harvard University. He has led hundreds of workshops and presentations throughout the United States and around the world, and he is also an ordained interfaith minister and holds a master's degree in music composition. Hey, Juan Carlos. Welcome to In Practice.

Juan Carlos Areán: Thank you so much Rob. Thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me.

Wolf: Well, it is a pleasure and an honor to have you here. So, why don't we just dive in, and for people who may not be familiar with some of the terminology, if you could just define what is abusive partner intervention programming and maybe you can reflect a little bit too on how it has evolved over the years and the factors that have fed its evolution.

Areán: Well, so what we call abusive partner intervention programs is basically working with people who use violence in their intimate relationships and that cause harm in those relationships. We are at a period in history for this field that we're changing language around it and different people use different names for this kind of work. It traditionally has been called batterer’s intervention, although some people prefer to call it battering intervention. And I think some of us are trying to talk more about intervention of the behavior, rather than the person. But whatever you want to call them, these programs work with people who use violence -- originally men, but in the last few years, more people across the gender spectrum. 

These programs started in the 1970s pretty soon after the battered women's movement started with the second wave of feminism. I think there were men who were allies to the women in this movement, and, as I hear from people who are originators of this kind of programming, these women basically told the men, go do something with the abusers, help them change. So, it's a relatively new field in some ways, but somewhat established now after 40 years. I have been doing the work for 30 years now, this is my 30th anniversary year. And one of the things of having been doing it for a while, one of the advantages is that you do see evolution. Sometimes evolution that you may agree with. And sometimes that you might not agree with, but in general I think this field has evolved in ways that I do agree with. Well, at the very beginning, people really didn't know what they were doing. There were no laws against domestic violence in the mid 70s and people were just trying to figure out how to do this work. As the domestic violence movement became more and more aligned with the criminal and legal systems, the programs did that, too. 

So, we are now in a situation in which most of these programs are very connected with the criminal justice system, some of them with also the civil system and with child welfare, but not so much. And I think historically, there was a lot of emphasis on what a traditional definition of accountability. And what I mean a traditional definition is like mainly focusing on consequences, legal and sometimes also outside the legal system, and not so much focusing on the process of change, if you will. That's something that has been changing in the last few years. And even though not everybody is in the same boat with this, this is by no means a monolithic field. In fact, there's a lot of disagreement in many things, but more and more people are starting to realize that in addition to having very strong limits and consequences, what some people would call accountability or traditionally, you also have to be thinking about support for positive change and for barriers that might be on the way for people to make choices that are more healthy for their families. So that's one way in which I have seen the field change and it's a significant change, by the way.

Wolf: That's so interesting and before I ask, and move on, move the conversation forward. I thought maybe just to make sure so I understood correctly, it sounds like when these programs first emerged in the 70s because there wasn't a lot of legal leverage or it wasn't even recognized necessarily as a crime everywhere, domestic violence, that the effort was on, just do something. And it sounds a little more like, get them to change. And then it became more punitive as the justice system got involved. And now we're at a place where both have a role to play if there's change and there's also the accountability that comes with having laws in place. If I summarize that correctly, I'm wondering if I did.

Areán: I think that's a great way to put it. I myself had not thought about it that way. One thing I do want to add is that I think at the beginning, even when there were no mandates for people to go to these programs. A lot of people approach the work from, kind of like a righteous perspective, if I might use that word. There was either purposefully or not, there was a lot of shaming happening. And a lot of kind of separation between practitioners, some people that participated in the program. And I think there's now plenty of research to show not only in this field, but in general and when you are trying to invite someone to change that shame might not be the best way to do it. It might work for some people and guilt might work, which is different from shame. Guilt is more about feeling bad about what you've done and shame for me is more about who you are. 

So even though at the beginning, there was no that legal mandate, I think the approaches and again, I totally understand that back then people were trying to figure out okay, how do we do this, how does this work? But I think through the years we have to realize that to invite people to change from a more compassionate way without colluding. And that's where people get tripped up with this issue is that sometimes they feel like, okay, what we are saying, that if we support that change, if we see more of the humanity in people who use violence to help them change, we are colluding with them, and we're making things worse. 

But I believe that as you said at the end of your statement that you can do both things. You can keep a strong accountability, both from a legal and outside of the legal system like natural consequences of life. But at the same time, you can be supportive in that process of change and empathize in that way with the person. And again, it's interesting because I think more and more research is showing that that combination, that balance between those two things are probably the way to go.

Wolf: Let's jump forward in time, that is from the 1970s to now where Futures Without Violence, and the Center for Court Innovation have been collaborating. I know the goal of the collaboration has been really to advance understanding of abusive partner intervention programming and the latest research and best practices. So, how have you approached this work and what's your vision for it?

Areán: Center for Court Innovation and Futures Without Violence, in my view, are maybe the only two national organizations, and I hope that I'm not leaving anyone out, but they're at least from my knowledge the two national organizations that historically decided to include looking at abusive partner intervention as part of our work. There's many other organizations that focus on supporting victims, as we do too, and CCI does too, and bystanders and also prevention, and so on. So, there's a lot of aspects to approach this work, but I think it was in some way natural that eventually CCI and Futures would connect around this thing, this topic. Because we both have been approaching it from somewhat different perspectives, at least from the beginning. And we have been more coming from a community kind of approach, obviously CCI, a lot of their works is in the courts. 

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, over 500,000 people a night in the U.S. lived without shelter, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. During the pandemic, those numbers rose even higher. Afraid they might contract Covid-19 in a shelter and lacking safe alternatives, many more people than usual sought warmth and safety in transit hubs. Social service providers across the country have tried to address their needs but can't reach everyone. Often it ends up being the police who engage one-on-one with the unhoused.

"The police are put in situations to deal with people and issues that government has not figured out how to handle adequately. Police all across the country deal with these difficult things on a daily basis," says Christopher Trucillo, chief of the New Jersey Transit Police.

On this episode of In Practice, Chief Trucillo, Deputy Chief of New Jersey Transit Police Laura Hester,  and Polly Hanson, senior director of Security, Risk, and Emergency Management at the American Public Transportation Association discuss with host Robert V. Wolf the intersection of homelessness and transit police, including successful partnerships among transit authorities, police, and local service providers that give the unhoused a chance to access services while also helping transit systems pursue their mission of safe transportation.

Thousands of veterans experience homelessness each year and many hundreds also find themselves in the justice system. Veterans treatment courts provide participants substance use treatment in lieu of jail and also provide support with benefits, employment and housing. A key partner in their work is the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which created the Veterans Justice Outreach Program with a goal to end homelessness among veterans. In 2016, specialists with the Veterans Justice Outreach Program worked with 461 veterans treatment courts. By 2019, that number had grown to 601.

On this episode of In Practice, Judge Marcia Hirsch, the presiding judge of treatment courts in Queens, N.Y., including the Queens Veterans Treatment Court, and Sean Clark, National Director of the Veterans Justice Outreach Program with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, discuss with host Rob Wolf the challenges some veterans face, including housing insecurity, and how their programs work together to address homelessness.

RISE ⁠—which stands for Reimagining Intimacy through Social Engagement—works to ensure community-based gun violence prevention efforts have more tools and resources to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence. Gun violence and intimate partner violence are often viewed as separate problems requiring different responses, but neighborhoods impacted by high rates of gun violence also have the highest levels of reported domestic violence incidents. Access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a partner experiencing abuse will be killed.

The RISE Project is part of New York City’s anti-violence Crisis Management System and is run in partnership with the Mayor’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence. On this episode of In Practice, three members of the RISE team—Hailey Nolasco, director, Al-Tabar Hudgins, uptown coordinator, and Karolin Betances, downtown coordinator—talk to Rob Wolf about the origins of the initiative, how it differs from a more conventional law enforcement approach, and how they engage people in conversations about the important but hard-to-talk-about topic of intimate partner violence.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, courthouses across the country have adjusted to doing at least some of their business remotely—with litigants in one place, judges and lawyers in another. Even as jurisdictions start to emerge from lockdown, many courts have continued to do at least some of their business remotely as a way to minimize crowding and maintain social distance.

This episode of In Practice focuses on a specific example of video conferencing—its use at initial appearances in adult criminal court. The conversation looks at this practice—which some jurisdictions implemented long before Covid-19—from the perspective of defense practitioners, examining both pros and cons. In discussion with host Rob Wolf are members of the Center for Court Innovation's Criminal Defense Initiatives team, Lisa Vavonese, deputy director, and Liz Ling, coordinator.

This episode is funded in part by Grant No. 2017-YA-BX-K004 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. Points of view or opinions in this podcast episode are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

 In the U.S., six to seven and a half million people are victims of stalking every year. Nearly one in six women and one in 17 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point in their lifetimes. In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses stalking in the context of domestic violence and intimate partner violence with national expert Jennifer Landhuis, director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC). They talk about what stalking is, why it's so dangerous, and what's being done among advocates and legal practitioners to address it. Recorded on April 10, 2020.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2015-TA-AX-K023 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.

The news is filled with stories about a rise in domestic violence spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. This comes as courts reduce operations to abide by public health restrictions. Yet practitioners in courts across the U.S. are committed to responding to—and reducing the incidence of—domestic violence. On this episode of In Practice, we hear from four of those practitioners, who discuss the challenges courts and communities are experiencing and how the justice system is adapting.

Family Court, which addresses complex issues involving some of the most vulnerable populations, is not exempt from the effects that COVID-19 are having on court operations across the country. Many judiciaries are closing courthouses, reducing or delaying hearings, or conducting business remotely. Family Court is limited to “essential” business, and Kate Wurmfeld, our director of Family Court Operations, talks about the challenges and changing circumstances for families dealing with remote hearings, coordinating visitation, and accessing services. This episode recorded on 3/24/2020.

As we work urgently to adjust our programs in New York to meet the COVID-19 pandemic, our expert assistance team is also working with drug treatment court practitioners across the country. Our director of Treatment Court programs, Annie Schacher, discusses advice for practitioners to help them prepare and brainstorm alternatives to help participants maintain sobriety, even when the courts and treatment programs are closed, and check-ins can no longer take place in-person.