Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

172 Lisa Fischel-Wolovick
of an order of protection. The Primary Aggressor Amendment as well as the
resulting training for law enforcement has reduced the risk that battered women
would be revictimized by the criminal justice system.
Domestic Violence Intervention Act of 1994
Combating domestic violence requires a collaborative effort among law
enforcement, domestic violence advocates, and the courts, as well as public
education and training of law enforcement personnel. The DVIA represents a
comprehensive approach on the part of the Legislature, law enforcement and
domestic violence advocates to criminalize domestic violence and provide for
the safety of battered women. The DVIA also provides concurrent jurisdiction
over family offenses, by providing battered women with access to the remedies
from both Family and Criminal Courts. A battered woman may now elect to
have her case heard in Family Court, which hears not only orders of protection
but also issues of custody, visitation, child support, and violations of orders of
protection, at the same time a criminal prosecution is being pursued. The new
domestic violence legislation also provides Family Court judges with the
discretion to transfer cases to the district attorney for prosecution. 5 Both
provisions, while not foolproof, increase options for battered women.
In New York, Bruno v Codd paved the way for the current reform domestic
violence legislation. 6 This case was brought in part as a response to “. . . [the]
frequent failure of officers of the New York City Police Department to respond
to requests for safeguarding made by . . . a battered or threatened wife, . . .
because of reluctance on the part of police to intervene in what they reflexively
characterized as ‘domestic disputes’ rather than criminal offenses.” 7
The argument that a mandated criminal response fails to empower battered
women does not consider the conditions that existed prior to mandatory arrest and
to a certain extent continue into the present, as well as the inclusive remedies in the
DVIA. The remedies include not only mandatory arrest, but also concurrent
jurisdiction over family offenses, training, collaboration and institutionalized
tracking of domestic violence incidents in the form of the Domestic Incident Report.
Following the enactment of the DVIA, the New York State Office of
Domestic Violence Prevention conducted an extensive state-wide study of
recidivism and the effectiveness of mandatory arrest over an eighteen month
period. 8 This study reviewed over 13,000 incident reports from a total of eight
sites across New York State, from communities ranging in size from 35,000 to