By DIANE L. ROSENFELD
July 18, 2010
Connecticut is at the forefront of a national movement to use global positioning system technology to track high-risk domestic violence offenders and to stop them before they strike. A new state law has established a pilot program to use GPS monitoring to help enforce protective orders.
It might have saved Tiana Notice's life. Tiana was brutally murdered on Valentine's Day in 2009 at her home in Plainville, allegedly at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, James Carter. He has been charged with her murder. She had a protective order against him that he violated several times — sending threatening messages, slashing her tires and leaving a letter under her door. Although her father had installed a security camera in her apartment, she did not know that her assailant was lying in wait the night she was killed. GPS monitoring could have alerted the police and Tiana that he was there.
GPS enables law enforcement to monitor the movements of an offender who must wear an electronic bracelet. Police are alerted if the batterer has entered an "exclusionary zone," such as the victim's home, workplace or a child's school, and can immediately notify and protect the victim. This early warning system has made the difference between life and death for many endangered women in states with similar laws.
Tiana's case, like so many others, showed signs of increasing danger presented by her ex-boyfriend. First, and significantly, she had broken up with him. Approximately 75 percent of intimate partner homicides involve a male partner who will not accept a woman's decision to end their relationship and to be free from his violence. Whenever a woman is abused and files for divorce or otherwise seeks protection from her partner's violence, we as a society, and especially in the criminal justice system, need to take very seriously any signs that he won't let go. One such sign is the violation of a protective order.
Protective orders commonly establish exclusionary zones from which the offender is prohibited. These orders are worthless, however, if not enforced. GPS can give women more confidence that a protective order will actually work. This will help eliminate situations in which abused women fail to seek protective orders because they see them as useless. Strict monitoring of protective orders is crucial as about a quarter of them are violated. Approximately one quarter of women killed by their intimate partners had a protective order at the time of their murder.
When a woman seeks help from the justice system, the people who are supposed to help her must treat her case as potentially lethal, evaluate the red flags indicating her partner's sexual possessiveness and wrap her in a safety net.
Connecticut's new legislation is a step in this direction. If we fail to protect a woman who is in danger, it puts her at greater risk than before she sought help. Batterers become emboldened when law enforcement fails to respond to protective order violations, and the violence predictably escalates into homicide in way too many cases. Three to four women a day in this country are killed at the hands of their intimate partners — people who professed to love them.
GPS monitoring focuses police attention on these danger signs, gives them proof of violations and an opportunity to save lives. It also allows them to be better prepared, with backup and information, when rushing to a potentially volatile situation.
In Massachusetts, where we have been using GPS in domestic violence cases, high-risk management teams evaluate all cases, identify the ones that are potentially lethal and use various methods to contain the batterer's behavior, providing increased safety for the victim. Our pilot program, the Greater Newburyport High-Risk Case Management Team, reports no domestic homicides, 100 percent success using GPS monitoring (meaning neither re-assaults nor violations of protection orders) and a conviction rate of offenders of more than 90 percent.
Connecticut has joined 18 states in what is becoming a national movement to better monitor high-risk domestic offenders. We no longer have to shake our heads in resignation, wondering what might have been done to save an endangered woman's life. Instead, we need to respond to the smoke and extinguish the fire before yet another precious life is lost.
Diane L. Rosenfeld is a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where she teaches courses on domestic violence and women's advocacy.
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