Calgary Herald two-part series on domestic violence - Part 2

Homefront's carrot-and-stick approach helps justice system

Valerie Fortney, Calgary Herald

Published: Monday, September 15, 2008

Boom times have brought a rapid and massive influx of money, jobs and people to our province.

But it's also contributed to Alberta earning the dubious title of Domestic Violence Capital of Canada. Calgary, thanks to the recent spate of high-profile domestic homicides that have captured national and even international headlines, is its battered poster child.

In this two-part series, Herald columnist Valerie Fortney looks at the issue of domestic violence in our city and province, along with the groundbreaking work being done to combat the problem.

The man standing in front of Judge Sean Dunnigan looks frail, his hunched shoulders and frightened expression giving him an air of meekness.

But his crime betrays his courtroom demeanour, as he pleads guilty to assaulting his teenage daughter, an altercation that took place after he had too much to drink and ended up almost breaking his child's arm.

Within seconds of his sentencing -- the judge hands down a 12-month suspended sentence, ordering him to abstain from alcohol and to attend counselling -- the man is gone and another has taken his place.

It's a busy recent day in Courtroom 508 at the provincial courts building, as one accused after another, their lawyers following behind along with the loved ones who've filed complaints against them, appear in Calgary's court devoted to family violence criminal cases. Some of them walk in on their own, but many are here, dressed in blue prison coveralls, via closed-circuit television from the remand centre.

Sitting beside this writer is Maggie MacKillop, operations director for Homefront, a Calgary umbrella organization that employs a collaborative, community-justice response to domestic violence. She holds a 12-page docket in her hands, with the names of 64 accused -- seven of them women -- scheduled to appear before Judge Dunnigan before day's end. The charges, which include everything from death threats and choking to pointing a firearm, are also part of a regular day's docket.

"This is pretty much what we see every day," says MacKillop of the scene a first-time observer can only describe as jaw dropping.

MacKillop acknowledges that it takes a five-day week, three for dockets and two for trials, to keep up with the flow of criminal charges stemming from domestic violence incidents in our city. It's so busy, in fact, that unlike the other courtrooms in the gleaming new building on 5th Street S.W., this one doesn't break for lunch.

But that's not where the differences end. The most important one is the people at the back of the courtroom, sitting at a table behind the spectator's area. Two are going through files, another gets up frequently to speak with courtroom visitors and to attend meetings in a side room known as the Early Case Resolution room, while two more listen intently, taking notes.

MacKillop points out the players: three Homefront caseworkers, a probation officer and a police officer specializing in domestic violence.

"The Crown sees the full picture," says MacKillop of the unique system before us. "With more information, the court can make better informed decisions, and people can see that there are resources for them and that we take domestic violence seriously."

What the casual observer also might not know is that this approach to combating the growing problem of domestic violence is very much a 21st century phenomenon.

Homefront started life at the end of the 1990s, one of the legacies of former mayor Al Duerr's Task Force on Community and Family Violence. In 1991, Duerr -- who last year received the Calgary Counselling Centre's Bravest Man award for his dedication to tackling domestic violence -- formed a committee that came up with 66 recommendations, including developing innovative sentencing programs for abusers and better awareness training for police.

In 1999, the Calgary Justice Working Project -- later renamed Homefront -- formed, bringing together a coalition of more than 60 community groups aimed at helping victims of domestic violence and rehabilitating abusers. The centrepiece of its mandate was to develop a specialized domestic violence court, one in which the various players on the front lines of domestic violence -- police, social agencies, the courts -- could work together to protect victims, monitor abusers and make treatment available to those willing to change.

Kevin McNichol, executive director of Homefront, acknowledges that while the concept was revolutionary for Calgary, we weren't the first to come up with the idea.

"Winnipeg had the first domestic violence court in Canada," he says, adding that Ontario and other jurisdictions later followed suit. "We were able to beg, borrow and steal from the best around the country."

They also relied on the expertise and experience of those on the local front lines, who today continue to be big boosters of the new approach.

"The addition of Homefront brought all people who touch the justice system together," says Robbie Babins-Wagner, CEO of the Calgary Counselling Centre, who was involved in the process from the beginning.

"Co-ordinating with other services, you know you're part of a larger solution," agrees Michelle Wickerson, communications manager of the Distress Centre Calgary, who sits on one of Homefront's committees. "It's good that recognition is out there today, better than it's ever been."

The statistics lend further credence to those extolling the virtues of community-wide collaboration. In 2007 alone, the cost to Calgary's justice system for domestic violence cases was $39 million. Prior to Homefront being implemented, the recidivism rate (repeat offending) was around 35 per cent; today, Homefront reports the recidivism rate at nine per cent, realizing a cost savings to the local justice system of $9.5 million a year.

Such numbers don't tell the story of the even more valuable human savings of fighting a crime which, according to Statistics Canada, is one primarily perpetrated by males against females (85 per cent of victims are women).

"We're not only holding offenders accountable, today we're holding ourselves accountable for ending domestic violence," says McNichol, who on Tuesday will host a fundraiser for Homefront, The Stop the Tears Gala (403-206-2100, ext. 221, for ticket info).

Those working closely with offenders in this new world have seen a sea change not only in their day-to-day work, but also in their clients.

"There are more people getting treatment," says Gary Gibbens, manager of adult counseling programs for the YWCA Sheriff King Home. "More than half the offenders who receive treatment get better."

Gibbens, who has been working with offenders for more than 30 years and sees about 900 clients each year, says the collaborative effort, and its successes so far, have helped to "dispel the myth that offenders don't benefit from treatment, that they can't help to heal themselves."

Mark Tyndale has also noticed remarkable change in his clients.

"I've seen many go through a cycle, from denial to absolute, genuine contrition," says Tyndale, a defence lawyer with a quarter century of experience.

"It's essentially a combination of the carrot and the stick," he says of the new justice approach. "There are real consequences, but there is an alternative: if the accused is willing to get treatment, there is a chance for them to avoid jail or a criminal record altogether."

Chief Crown prosecutor Gordon Wong says that while this unique program has taken some getting used to for those in his profession, you can't argue with its success. "We now see recidivism rates cut by a full two-thirds," says Wong. "It clearly works."

At the same time Homefront was in its infancy back at the beginning of the decade, the Calgary Police Service was also developing its own improved system for dealing with a crime that has given Alberta the dubious title of domestic violence capital of Canada.

Calgary police Chief Rick Hanson says that new strategies have been implemented over the past several years, including better training of officers and mandatory reporting of all domestic incidents.

"The criminal process is a piece, but not the be all and end all for dealing with domestic violence," says Hanson, who calls his Domestic Conflict Team "effectively a homicide prevention unit."

Staff Sgt. Rosemary Hawkins, who heads up the Domestic Conflict Team, says that in addition to investigating approximately 400 serious cases of domestic violence each year, her team is also at the forefront of training others on the front lines, such as health practitioners. In January, her 15-person team will increase by two, thanks partly to the $25 million announced this week to help bolster the city's policing ranks.

"Our chief sees this as a priority," she says.

Working with Homefront, she says, "has given us a broader net, so we can be a better service provider."

Pioneering work to better understand this complex social problem is also being done locally at the academic level.

The University of Calgary recently established the Brenda Strafford chair in the prevention of domestic violence, naming U of C Prof. Leslie Tutty to the post.

Tutty, also the academic co-ordinator for Resolve, a tri-prairie research network studying domestic violence, says that the past decade has brought with it extraordinary changes in the field, not only at the community level but also in research and understanding of the dynamics involved in domestic violence.

"We know so much now that we didn't before," says Tutty, who in addition to working on a longitudinal study of 600 domestic violence victims across the Prairies is also involved in ongoing evaluations of Homefront's program.

"But we still have so far to go."

She supports Homefront's ability to bring the various members of the field together. "It's not pro prosecution, it's a better way of looking at the nature of these crimes," she says of the process. "It looks at the breadth of the history, giving everyone involved a more contextual picture."

Prevention is a key word for Val Campbell, who heads up the Alberta Relationship Threat Assessment and Management Initiative, recently formed by the Alberta Solicitor General's department.

"There is a plethora of research out there today, which is helping us to assess risk," says Campbell, who adds her newly established Edmonton-based unit -- which works closely with Calgary, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge and Edmonton police as well as the RCMP -- is the first of its kind in Canada.

Alberta is also only the second province to issue emergency protection orders against domestic stalking offenders.

But, says Campbell, there is still much work to be done.

"This is a pandemic," she says of domestic violence, "and we're not anywhere near where we need to be."

Campbell suggests several ways in which this work can be improved, including instituting threat assessments at all bail hearings for domestic violence crimes; better education of law school students about the issue; improved education programs at the school level about what constitutes a healthy relationship; and better police training across the province.

vfortney@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2008