By Sarah Stortz
To avoid relationships turning abusive, local law enforcement has implemented a survey to help address the issue of domestic violence.
The Iowa City police and the University of Iowa police implemented the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment last week. The assessment is a testing procedure that aims to predict domestic assault in the future.
Iowa City police Investigator Scott Stevens, part of the Johnson County team trained to use the tool, said he finds it extremely useful because of its high accuracy.
“The assessment is 77 percent accurate, making it very valid, which is incredible, because we’re talking about people, not computers,” he said.
The official survey has 13 checkpoints, asking questions ranging from if perpetrators have been accused of previous assaults or have had a prison sentence of more than 30 days. A total raw score is calculated at the end, determining how seriously the perpetrator should be taken. The higher the score, the more likely the tool predicts the convicted perpetrator will commit more assaults.
It was developed by the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in 1999. The tool made its way to Iowa last year, when University of Toronto Professor N. Zoe Hilton, one of the progenitors of the assessment, visited Des Moines to give a seminar about it.
During her time, Hilton gave a two-day session called “Train the Trainer,” in which m,ore than 30 professionals from Iowa learned how to use it, with Johnson Country being selected as the pilot county.
Becky Kinnamon, the director of the Crimes Against Persons Program in the State Court Administrators Office, said Johnson County was selected to pilot the program in Iowa because of the community’s strong background in handling domestic-abuse charges.
“We wanted to start at a place where we couldn’t start at ground zero,” she said. “We have many resources like the Domestic Violence Intervention Program and Department of Human Services. We’d later have the goal to expand out to other communities.”
DVIP Assistant Director Delaney Dixon, another member of the Johnson County team, said that having the assessment to the community will be largely beneficial, because different departments can be on the same page when handling domestic-abuse charges.
“The thing is that you see different entities speaking the same language,” Dixon said. “All of these departments were used to using their own terms due to their different professions. [The assessment] is effective, research-based, and we all know what it is.”
Stevens said using the program in his work is helpful while investigating domestic-abuse charges.
“I’ve had to look at cases to determine how dangerous [the domestic-assault charge] is,” he said. “Assigning a quantifiable number helps me prioritize cases much easier.”
Dixon said having the assessment will make it more likely to save individuals involved in an abusive relationship.
“We have bright hopes for this assessment tool,” Dixon said.