VAWA at 30: BWJP’s Role in Evolving Responses to Gender-Based Violence
By Amalfi Parker Elder, Esq., Director, National Center on Reimagining CCR
BWJP is excited to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the historic enactment of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. VAWA’s passage represented Congress’ recognition of the pandemic of gender-based violence, and the decades-long efforts of survivors and advocates to advance safety and shelter for victims and accountability and appropriate treatment for offenders. The Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) was established in 1995 to implement VAWA, including the administration of grant programs that provide federal funding to support services and responses to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking (DDVSAS).
Over the past 30 years, BWJP has worked closely with OVW to support the implementation of VAWA and provide training and technical assistance (TTA) to VAWA grant recipients nationwide.
- Since its founding in 1995, the Full Faith & Credit Center has focused on implementing the Full Faith and Credit provision of VAWA. Under the leadership of BWJP, the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit's (NCPOFFC) scope of work includes all protection order-related work (including problems with issuance, service, and enforcement), domestic violence-related federal crimes and federal and state firearm prohibitions. Today, BWJP’s NCPOFFC continues to provide resources and TTA to states, tribes, U.S. territories, stakeholders, and allied professionals.
- Since the outset of VAWA funding in 1995, BWJP provided TTA to OVW STOP grantees and became the first OVW Comprehensive TA provider for the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies and Enforcement of Protection Orders program (Arrest Grants), now known as the Improving Criminal Justice Response (ICJR) grant.
- With OVW funding, BWJP’s National Child Custody Project developed the SAFeR approach to decision-making in family law matters in 2009.
- In 2013, OVW funded the first National Resource Center on Domestic Violence and Firearms at BWJP.
- In 2023[AP1] ,
- BWJP’s National Defense Center for Criminalized Survivors became OVW’s TTA provider to victim service organizations serving justice-involved survivors;
- BWJP assumed the role of TTA provider to OVW’s Firearms Technical Assistance Program; and
- BWJP’s National Center on Legal Approaches to Prevent Family Violence was selected as OVW’s TTA provider for enhancing community supervision strategies and building the capacity of pre-trial, probation, and parole officers to supervise DDVSAS cases effectively.
VAWA[i] and OVW have evolved over the last 30 years. Speaking to VAWA’s 30th anniversary, OVW Director Rosie Hidalgo remarks that “One of the hallmarks of VAWA is fostering a Coordinated Community Response, or CCR.” The 2006 OVW Arrest Grants Program Solicitation stated, “The primary purpose of the Arrest program is to encourage communities to adopt a coordinated community response (CCR) in the treatment of domestic violence as a serious violation of criminal law” … “that requires the criminal justice system to hold offenders accountable for their actions through investigation, arrest, and prosecution of violent offenders, and through close judicial scrutiny and management of offender behavior”
By May 2024, an OVW publication states that CCR “fosters a multi-sectoral approach that is survivor-centered and trauma-informed, bringing together victim service providers, criminal and civil justice systems, community-based organizations, health care providers, and other partners at the local level to meet the diverse needs of survivors on their path to safety, justice, healing, and wellbeing.” Director Hidalgo commented earlier this year that “there have been significant paradigm shifts in society’s perceptions of these crimes and our responses to them” since the inception of VAWA. OVW now has programming for expanding access to justice for diverse survivors through culturally specific responses and community-based approaches like restorative justice practices and violence interruption programs.
We’ve had a paradigm shift at BWJP as well. In our 25-year role as the TTA provider to OVW Arrest Grants/ICJR recipients, BWJP fostered the growth and development of CCR in jurisdictions across the country. We learned many lessons from survivors and marginalized communities about the persistent challenges and inequities they encounter when accessing domestic violence services and navigating criminal and civil legal, immigration, housing, and health systems.
In 2022, BWJP launched the National Center on Reimagining Coordinated Community Response (NCRCCR) to provide CCRs with the knowledge and practical skills and tools for centering survivors’ lived realities and prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized survivors, their families, and communities. Creating pathways to “safety, justice, healing, and well-being” for diverse survivors necessitates CCRs understanding and learning how to conduct community outreach and organize and develop meaningful relationships with community-based organizations and leaders.
The Community is the most essential component of inclusive, equitable, and accessible coordinated community responses. NCRCCR supports advocates, system practitioners, and other allied professionals in learning about the intersectionality of survivors’ identities, the nuance of their communities, and the multiple pathways to solutions that CCRs will have when community-based responses are valued as much as system-based responses. Rather than limiting CCR outcomes to improve systems’ responses, the reimagined CCR taps into community assets and strengths to improve the lives of all survivors and their families.
Through the NCRCCR’s reimagining of CCR and the innovative work to enhance advocacy and civil and criminal legal systems among BWJP’s 6 other national resource centers, BWJP is taking the many achievements of VAWA to new heights for the next 30 years and beyond.
[i] VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, 2005, 2013, and 2022.
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