Whether you have a barely formed interagency team, a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) that is facing hurdles, a domestic violence organization that wants to develop a CCR in your community or a well-established team that wants to further develop skills, this is the pre-conference institute for you. This training will offer core leaders in any CCR/ inter-agency effort — coordinators, advocates, prosecutors, and law enforcement ideas on how to strengthen, expand, and give new direction to their CCR. If you come as a team it can provide an opportunity for you to integrate the information provided to take back to your community with purpose and direction.

This training institute will provide latest research and information on best practices for coordinating criminal justice system responses to battering. Whether you are new or seasoned, you will leave with an understanding of how to build a CCR that can effectively prioritize and implement solutions to better protect victims and their children, hold offenders accountable, and maximize the efficacy of your coordinated community response.

General session topics will include:
The mission, purpose, and function of an effective CCR
Activities for CCRs: Moving from networking to action
Problem solving, practices, and strategies to assure enhanced and consistent responses
Incorporating attention to risk, danger and history into all points of the intervention.

Discipline-specific tracks will address related CCR roles, best practices, and emerging issues, but will also specifically address:

Law enforcement: Realities of domestic violence and their impact on law enforcement response, strategies for reducing homicides of victims and officers, reducing dual arrests and false arrests, evidence-based investigation strategies when responding to domestic violence-related crimes, etc.
Prosecution: Charging, pretrial release, plea negotiation, preparing for trial, trial, sentencing, enforcement, influencing work prior to a prosecutor’s involvement that “makes or breaks” the case, and working with battered women’s advocates
CCR coordinators and advocates: Tools and skills for enhancing your interagency responses to battering, strategic use of research, statistics, and data to inform interagency discussions and accountability, anticipating resistance and strategizing to prevent/overcome obstacles, strategic use of “the table”