Battered Women's Justice Project

BWJP promotes systemic change within the civil and criminal justice systems to ensure an effective and just response to victims and perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV), and the children exposed to this violence.

In BWJP’s view, an effective and just response to IPV

• Identifies the context in which the offense occurred and addresses IPV as a patterned crime.
• Maximizes interagency coordination toward shared intervention goals.
• Maximizes victim safety and engagement in the process, and offers meaningful community support and protection that allows victims to act on their own behalf, and on behalf of their children.
• Holds abusers accountable for ending their violence and coercion, and offers meaningful assistance to those seeking to change.
• Reduces the harm to children exposed to violence in their homes and promotes their future well-being.
• Incorporates evidence-based risk and lethality assessment strategies into its practices.
• Identifies and reduces disparities in interventions and case outcomes related to race, class, age, sexual orientation, and gender.

To achieve this mission, BWJP staff

• Provide technical assistance to local jurisdictions or military installations seeking to assess and improve their coordinated community response to IPV.
• Identify effective civil, criminal and military justice system policies and practices in local communities across the country, and promote their implementation nationwide.
• Organize national and local trainings to improve the skills of the range of professionals involved in these cases, and build the capacity of legal advocates working in local jurisdictions to effect systemic change.
• Analyze and comment on policy proposals related to civil/criminal justice system practices in IPV cases.
• Participate as amicus curiae in relevant appellate cases.
• Undertake special projects to identify effective and just civil/criminal justice interventions.
• Identify emerging research on civil/criminal justice responses to IPV and promote discussion of its application in the field.
• Develop and disseminate guides and other tools to assist professionals in the field.
• Listen with empathy, engage in strategic thinking, and provide information/referrals to IPV victims and others seeking guidance regarding their civil or criminal cases.