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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, July 6 2004
Contact:
Lead Coordinator, Dee Koester at 360-786-5540 x 6248.
Victim’s
Assistance Program Sets New Precedence
OLYMPIA -- The previously reported Thurston County
Prosecuting Attorney’s Office -Violence against Women Act (VAWA) grant
(awarded last October for $469,000 for two years) has broken new ground for
Thurston County, the State of Washington, and perhaps the nation.
The Audit process required settling on a specific
question to be addressed by the Audit. The Audit Coordinators chose a question
that continued the focus of the grant.
“ To what extent does Thurston County provide for safety of victims of
domestic violence (intimate partner violence) to include sexual assault and
stalking within marginalized populations?”
Marginalized populations include rural, culturally different, non-
English speaking and vulnerable (developmentally delayed /disabled, mentally
ill, elderly populations).
This specific question
has never been audited according to the founder of the institutional
ethnography tool, Ellen Pence Ph.D., located at Praxis International in Duluth
Minnesota.
The grant focuses on the
development/provision/improvement of victim services and offender
accountability systems in areas within the county, who currently do not have
victim advocates, who have contracted legal services, who are rural in nature
and who have communities of underserved populations. These community
characteristics increase isolation and danger for victims of domestic
violence, sexual assault and stalking. The communities served are Yelm,
Rainier, Tenino, Bucoda and Tumwater.
The first part of the South Thurston County Rural Project
is to conduct a Victim Safety and Offender Accountability Audit. The Audit
uses the structure of a research methodology known as institutional
ethnography.
Institutional ethnography is a process of observing,
interviewing, conducting focus groups, and analyzing institutional text to
determine where the strength and weakness of a system reside. The Audit is not
about blame or pointing fingers, but assumes everyone wants to do the best job
possible within their respective professions.
The Audit is partitioned into four phases. Phase I is
looking at the CAPCOM/Dispatch system, Law Enforcement response and
investigation and Prosecution to the point of the charging decision. Phase II
of the Audit will look at processes through negotiation and plea -bargaining.
Phase III will look at processes from treatment to re-offense / non-
compliance. Phase IV will look at other systems and other impacting or
intersection points, not previously covered, such as Safeplace, the Thurston
County jail, and specific underserved populations and their experience with
the criminal justice system. Memorandums of Understanding have been secured
from participating agencies for Phase I.
The first report back to the community will be presented
at the October 8th, 2004 “Best Practices in Domestic Violence-
Developing A Coordinated Community Response “ Conference, by Rhonda L.
Martinson from the Battered Women’s Justice Project in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
Victim Safety and Offender Accountability Audit
Coordinators are: Dee Koester, Prosecutor’s Office, Detective Louise Adams,
Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, Laura Hurtado- Webb, Safeplace, and Sheryl
Reese, DSHS/Adult Protective Services.
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