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First, Do No Harm: Facilitating a Trauma-Informed Response

Trauma is a direct result of the abuse and exploitation that offenders inflict on victims of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. This acute trauma, often compounded with historical trauma, impacts survivor’s ability to fully participate in the criminal justice process. As a result, a collaborative, trauma-informed response that takes historical context into consideration is essential to ensuring survivor access to justice while improving community safety.

This presentation describes various forms of trauma that victims may experience throughout their lives and as a result of an offender’s victimization. Presenters define cultural humility as a key element of a successful trauma-informed response that improves our individual, collective, and systematic responses to survivors. Additionally, the presenters provide strategies to identify, document, and introduce evidence of trauma to improve case outcomes and community safety by holding offenders accountable.

At the conclusion of this training, participants will be better able to:

• Identify signs and symptoms of trauma, and implement trauma-informed practices

• Enhance victim safety, privacy, autonomy, and participation through collaboration with allied professionals

• Practice cultural humility while preparing cases to proceed, regardless of a victim’s ability to participate in the process

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Writing it Right: Documenting Human Trafficking

One specific responsibility of law enforcement and prosecutors working on human trafficking cases is to write various reports, affidavits, and briefs that effectively document incidents of sex and labor trafficking. It is crucial for these documents to accurately reflect complex trafficking dynamics and case-specific facts to establish probable cause and effectively litigate issues at trial. When law enforcement and prosecutors collaborate with others, including those with lived experience, they are better equipped to successfully articulate how traffickers use a variety of overt and subtle tactics to exploit victims—thus establishing the element(s) of force, fraud, and/or coercion necessary for cases involving adult victims.

This presentation focuses on the core competencies needed by law enforcement and prosecutors to establish the elements of human trafficking. Additionally, facilitators discuss the necessity of protecting victim privacy and ensuring that public records and press releases accurately describe trafficking dynamics. In combination with other external messaging, this documentation can help educate the public—and potential jurors—about the realities of trafficking.

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be better able to:

• Effectively document traffickers’ actions to establish the elements of force, fraud, or coercion;

• Articulate the realities of human trafficking when communicating with the media and the public; and

• Ethically protect victim and witness safety in the public record.

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Transparency in Prosecution

This webinar spotlights Yolo County’s new criminal justice transparency portal, an innovative website created by the District Attorney’s Office, the Yolo County Multi-Cultural Council, and Measures for Justice (an organization that uses accurate criminal justice data to spur reform). The portal was developed to help the office analyze prosecution data and enhance trust with the community through transparency and accountability. It allows citizens an intimate glimpse into the prosecutorial process in Yolo County—including crime trends that are affecting their community; law enforcement resources in the area; and detailed case statistics pertaining to referrals, charging, diversion, and sentencing decisions. During this webinar, presenters give a live walkthrough of the portal, chronicle the process behind publicizing this data, and discuss their aspirations and policy goals driving this project.

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Criminal Justice from the Child’s Perspective: Supporting Child Victims & Witnesses

Interacting with the criminal legal system can be confusing, overwhelming and even retraumatizing for children and teens. However, through the Center for Court Innovation’s Child Witness Materials Development Project, a package of interactive, developmentally-informed educational materials has been created to facilitate effective and trauma-informed support for children involved in state, federal, and tribal court systems as victims and witnesses of crime. 

In this webinar, participants learn about how children and teens experience the criminal legal system; best practices in educating, preparing, and supporting children through this experience as a practitioner; and how these new court support materials can be used to mitigate trauma by helping children to feel more informed, empowered, and less distressed when navigating this system.

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Identifying the Predominant Aggressor and Evaluating Lethality

Every year, 3-4 million women in the U.S. are abused and 1,500-1,600 are killed by their abusers. One challenge, for first responders to a domestic disturbance where both parties are injured, is identifying the predominant aggressor. Police and prosecutors must also be able to determine the level of danger facing a victim. Several factors are associated with an increased risk of homicide in domestic violence relationships. While we cannot predict what will happen in a particular case, danger assessments can help determine the risk that a victim faces, enabling us to better prioritize our efforts and support the victim.

This presentation emphasizes the importance of contextual analysis in evaluating criminal responsibility at the arrest, charging, pre-trial, and sentencing phases. Such analysis will help to ensure that the dynamics of domestic violence are properly factored into decisions about arrest, charging, plea negotiations, and sentencing, and will enhance the quality of justice for those who have been victims of abuse. The presentation also discusses the importance of danger assessments and best practices in lethality evaluation.

At the conclusion of this presentation participants will be better able to:
– Evaluate the context within which an act of violence occurs.
– Overcome batterer manipulation of the justice system.
– Identify risk and lethality factors.

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First, Do No Harm: Trauma-Informed Interviewing

Traumatic crimes can impact victims in any number of ways, some obvious and some less so. Moreover, each victim’s response to trauma is unique to that individual. In order to keep victims safe and engaged throughout the criminal justice process, law enforcement and first responders must interact with victims in ways that consider the physical and emotional effects of trauma. Interviewers must understand more common responses to trauma that result from these effects and appreciate the impact of trauma on the victim’s ability to recall and recount details of the traumatic event.

This presentation identifies barriers to successful interviews and explores techniques for overcoming them. The presenter explains how a traditional fact-gathering approach to interviewing can be counterproductive or even harmful to the victim and to the investigation. Alternative approaches to interviewing and questioning are identified and analyzed for their potential to minimize re-traumatization and enhance our ability to recreate the reality of the crime at trial. An emphasis is placed on integrating a trauma-informed response from the first contact with a victim through the conclusion of the case, with realistic goals for interviews and meetings at every stage of the process.

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be better able to:

– Use open-ended and sensory questions

– Apply an ask and explain methodology

– Offer victims options and information for connecting with community resources

– Implement trauma-informed strategies that enhance victim safety and participation

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Identifying, Preserving, and Introducing Digital Evidence: #Guilty

The way we interact with technology continues to increase and evolve as we rely on computers, smart phones, and other digital devices to complete many of our daily activities. Unfortunately, as technology becomes more integral to our lives, offenders have increasingly misused technology to facilitate crimes against women, and as a means to assert power and control in the course of an intimate partner relationship. Where technology is being used to perpetrate crimes, investigators and prosecutors can identify, preserve, and present digital evidence in order strengthen cases, support victims, and hold offenders accountable for the full range of their criminal and abusive activity

This presentation demonstrates how cyber investigations can be used to reveal evidence of criminal activity, as well as evidence of the power and control dynamics of an abusive intimate partner relationship, but while also supporting the protection of victim privacy. The presenter discusses theories of admission, rules of evidence, and case law is discussed using “real life” examples to demonstrate how to properly authenticate and introduce digital evidence in civil and criminal proceedings.

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be better able to:

– Identify how offender misuse technology to perpetrate crimes and assert power and control against intimate partners

– Coordinate with allied professionals to better identify sources of digital evidence that can be used to strengthen prosecutions

– Effectively litigate the admission of digital evidence by analyzing applicable evidence rules, current case law, and underlying theories of admission

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Countering Witness Intimidation: Forfeiture by Wrongdoing

Witness intimidation and manipulation factor into almost every domestic violence prosecution. Abusers engage in these tactics because they often work. When witness intimidation is successful, victims decline to participate in the prosecution, they minimize the abuse on the witness stand, or they testify on behalf of the abuser.

But what if we eliminate the payoff for the would-be intimidator? Coordinated efforts by police, prosecutors, and advocates in the form of safety planning, expedited prosecution, victim education, and other strategies can reduce the opportunities for intimidation, thereby increasing the likelihood that victims will feel safe testifying in court. And prosecution strategies, from charging intimidation-related offenses to filing motions to admit out-of-court statements by victims who have been intimidated into silence, can actually increase the likelihood of conviction and the penal consequences for the intimidator. This presentation focuses on forfeiture by wrongdoing as a solution in the case of witnesses who are unavailable for trial due to the offender’s wrongful conduct.

At the conclusion of this training, participants will be better able to:

• Reduce opportunities for intimidation.

• Educate victims about intimidation.

• Preserve evidence of intimidation that will help to convict the abuser, regardless of whether (or how) the victim testifies.

• Litigate motions to admit evidence under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing.

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Disrupting “Pill Mills”: Using Data to Investigate and Prosecute Prescription Drug Diversion

Presented by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, Innovative Prosecution Solutions (IPS) Grantee

The opioid epidemic has devastated communities across the United States, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the past two decades. In response, some state and local prosecutors have taken a data-driven approach to the crisis. This webinar spotlights the experiences of an Innovative Prosecution Solutions (IPS) grantee’s efforts to tackle one troubling aspect of the opioid epidemic—doctors and pharmacists who inappropriately disseminate opioid medications. Tamara Holland of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office in Texas discusses data-driven methods to identify and prosecute “pill-mill” practices, such as analyzing prescription history data through Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and overdose death data from medical examiners’ offices.

Upon completion of this session, participants will be better able to:

– Collaborate with allied professionals to collect and analyze comprehensive data.

– Identify connections between at risk-patients and drug-diverting pharmacies and doctors.

– Utilize data analysis in conjunction with other intelligence-building techniques to inform charging strategies for prosecuting “pill-mill” doctors.

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Technology Implementation: Preparation and Pitfalls

Today, law enforcement officers not only address crime, but serve as front line responders to homelessness, mental health crises, and substance use disorders. While many police departments have mental health evaluation or Quality of Life teams, they often do not have the tools readily available to connect or reconnect the individuals they encounter to necessary services. 

This webinar spotlights the Long Beach City Prosecutor’s Office’s efforts to tackle this real-time information gap for police officers. City Prosecutor Doug Haubert and Legal Technologist Byron Bolton will discuss the creation of the Government User Integrated Diversion Enhancement System (GUIDES), a phone application that allows officers to immediately access relevant criminal justice and treatment information about an individual from anywhere in the city. This app not only grants law enforcement an extra measure of safety when encountering new individuals—by allowing them to search for any outstanding court orders or histories of mental health—but enables officers to make better-informed decisions about how to approach these individuals and which services to connect them to. Implementing this innovative technology required multiple partnerships and information-sharing protocols. The presenters discuss these crucial steps as well as the hurdles they overcame to launch this innovative application.