Collaboration, commitment, and conflict: Implementation of an innovative, interagency domestic violence program

Since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society the federal government has tried to persuade local governments to adopt federal policy priorities, often through offers of grants-in-aid for local government projects. Since the 1970s there has been a growing acceptance in American society that domestic violence is a social problem, and changing policy priorities have encouraged criminal justice agencies to increase offender accountability and victim safety. To that end the Department of Justice, Violence Against Women Grants Office awarded a grant-in-aid to city and county criminal justice and advocacy agencies in the Spokane region of northeastern Washington State to assist them in creation of an innovative, coordinated, co-located, inter-jurisdictional, public-private, community response to domestic violence for their region. This dissertation examines whether such a program, supported in part by a federal grant-in-aid, can be implemented successfully by a large group of local government and private agency decision-makers faced with the restrictions and oversight imposed by federal program management.;A three-year implementation monitoring and accountability process evaluation was conducted of the Spokane Regional Violence Team. Data were collected through direct observations, individual interviews, focus group interviews, and official agency statistics. These data were then tested against hypotheses derived from political science implementation, systems, and federalism theories and organizational contingency and organizational culture theories.;Program goals were: (1) a new city-county domestic violence task force program with law enforcement, prosecutors, and advocates in a co-located office, and dedicated domestic violence court and probation although not co-located due to ethical and victim safety concerns; (2) use of a vertical case management format so perpetrators who re-offend have all their cases addressed by the same prosecutor, detective, and victim advocate; (3) team building activities that promote sensitivity and knowledge sharing between program disciplines; (4) advocate equality with criminal justice professionals; (5) an electronic offender tracking database with lethality assessment inking local criminal justice agencies. The findings suggest that implementors were able to accomplish all program goals, except the offender tracking database, as planned. Other program goals have remained unchanged since the program was created, and policymakers' commitment to the program has endured. Additionally, participating agencies' policy priorities have remained focused on domestic violence issues.