E-Newsletter on Reforming Criminal Justices Responses to Battering

The Blueprint Bulletin provides you with tools to support your work. Each issue features information about Blueprint foundations, and updates on Blueprint communities, ideas about how to identify and address disparate outcomes.

Praxis can advise you on the adaptation and implementation of the Blueprint and/or to assist you in using aspects of the Blueprint response in your community. Access our Blueprint Clearinghouse to learn more about Blueprint training, consulting, information, strategies, and research.

The Blueprint Institute Impact
Becoming a Blueprint Community
2018 Blueprint Webinars
Blueprint Communities

 The Blueprint Institute Impact   

In July 2018, Praxis hosted an immersive Blueprint for Safety Institute to train communities interested in or currently implementing the Blueprint for Safety. A spectacular group of communities from across the country attended! Here’s what they had to say.

Aja Desmond, HAVEN Program Director, Bozeman, MT

Learning about The Blueprint for Safety has helped me understand the importance of building trusting relationships with community partners for its effective implementation. At the Institute, it became evident how essential it is to have 911 participating in our local Domestic Violence Response Team (DVRT). We have extended an invitation to [911 to] participate and started a dialogue to further our work with this CCR response model. Delving into the principle of victim engagement has allowed my team to share their existing practices, see overlap, and identify gaps with which we can all help each other.

Jocelyn Pinkerton, New Orleans Blueprint Coordinator, New Orleans, LA   

Praxis made time for Institute attendees to observe various organizations in St. Paul and also to meet with peers from St. Paul to discuss approaches to problem solving. I went on a site visit to “Bridges to Safety”… It was very helpful to learn from the St. Paul Blueprint for Safety Coordinator about how to approach Blueprint monitoring. I also had the opportunity to do a ride-along with a St. Paul patrol officer and learn about his interaction with domestic violence victims.

Andrea Howard, Crimes Victim Specialist, New Orleans, LA

The Blueprint Institute has helped a lot towards my work. After I had attended the Institute, I was more relaxed and confident in handling domestic violence cases. I got great ideas for interacting with the claimants. It was a pleasure to attend The Blueprint for Safety Institute.

Annie Struby, Blueprint Coordinator Rose Brooks Center, Kansas City, MO  

Team members expressed how helpful it was to experience Blueprint in a hands-on way and talk with their peers in Minnesota and around the country about the implementation process. It was especially helpful to have Kansas City team members from multiple agencies because it allowed us to take the information presented at the Institute and have real-time discussions about how we could make changes in Kansas City.

Gerald Sorensen, Kansas City Assistant City Prosecutor, Kansas City, MO    

The institute was a great window through which our team was able to see the end product of the journey on which we are about to embark.

 Becoming a Blueprint Community

Since St. Paul, Minnesota launched the first Blueprint for Safety in 2010, many communities around the country are enhancing their local response to domestic violence crimes with the Blueprint. Read about the positive impact on local CCRs that the Blueprint is having on Saint Paul, Marquette County and New Orleans.

Matt Wiese, Marquette County Prosecutor, Marquette, MI

I currently review every single felony submitted to the office for Blueprint compliance and have asked the prosecutors handling misdemeanors to do the same. I check in with them on a regular basis to ensure this is being done. The Blueprint has also led to a lot more engagement with probation in our county. They initiate contact with me for help in monitoring compliance with defendants’ completion of batterer intervention programming. We’ve found that judges order defendants into programming, but when they don’t comply the court is reluctant to revoke probation. So now we’re working together on an approach with the bench.

Bree Adams Bill, Saint Paul Blueprint Coordinator, Saint Paul, MN 

One area of great impact the Blueprint for Safety has had on our work in St. Paul, Ramsey County is the way in which we have shed more light on the real, lived experiences of victims/survivors of ongoing domestic violence. Though it’s true that the violence itself is more visible within the criminal legal system because of the Blueprint protocols and procedures, it is also true that the realities victims’/survivors’ face when intervention occurs is far more obvious. Historic cookie-cutter approaches are no longer applied, nor acceptable, within our Blueprint community. The Blueprint is designed to ensure a differentiated response is applied to account for the level of risk, danger, and violence in each domestic criminal case to account for who is at most risk of harm and who is doing the most harm. The effectiveness of this approach is evident by the way in which the criminal legal system responds to crimes in which the offender has fled with the same urgency of those in which the offender is arrested.

Sergeant Stephanie Minto-Gibson, Director of Crime Victims Reparations, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office (OPSO), New Orleans, LA

I [am] very pleased to say how much of an impact The Blueprint on Safety has in my daily tasks assisting victims of domestic violence. This has enhanced most divisions within OPSO, by connecting the dots in helping to track the perpetrator from the time he/she has entered our facility, to the time they will be released back to their families or society. We still have a few gaps that we can, together as a team, fill in a timely manner. I have learned so much and our deputies from the divisions that are involved have learned a lot from attending the Blueprint Institute.

 2018 Blueprint Webinars

Watch recordings of recent webinar trainings on the Blueprint for Safety:

• October 11, 2018–Role of the Advocate in Tracking System Response Part II
• August 21, 2018–Role of the Advocate in Tracking System Response Part I
• May 17, 2018–Improving Responses to Domestic Violence Crimes with the Blueprint for Safety

 Blueprint Communities

We are excited to announce that Gladwin County, Michigan, in partnership with Shelterhouse and the Midland County Blueprint Coordinator, Vicki Wakeman, received an Improving Criminal Justice System Response (ICJR) award from the Office on Violence Against Women to adapt and implement the Blueprint for Safety.

We are always interested in learning about communities around the country that are implementing Blueprints. Please contact info@praxisinternational.org if you do not see your community listed here.

 Contact us for more information 

Please contact us at info@praxisinternational.org

Fall 2018

This project was supported by Grant No. 2015-TA-AX-K032 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.