The Greenbook Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The “Greenbook” is so named because its cover is green. Its real title is Effective Intervention in Domestic Violence and Child Maltreatment Cases: Guidelines for Policy and Practice, and it was published in 1999 by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) after an 18-month development process.

A growing body of research in the 1980s and 1990s showed (1) that there was a co-occurrence of child maltreatment and adult-to-adult domestic violence in up to half of the families studied, and (2) that even when children were not themselves maltreated, many were exposed to violence by one parent against another. The Greenbook was developed as a result of this growing research and the frustration of service providers that their responses to battered mothers and their children were fragmented. The Family Violence Department of NCJFCJ convened a national group of experts from child welfare systems, domestic violence organizations, and juvenile courts to discuss this issue and establish national best-practice guidelines. The Greenbook contains 67 such recommendations on how to better serve families with the coordinated responses of these three social service and justice systems. The recommendations are grouped into five chapters focused on overarching principles and each of the three systems. The committee that developed the Greenbook struggled with many difficult issues, including defining terms, the sharing of confidential information, and mandating services among others. In the end, the committee found common ground in a shared language that sought safety, stability, and wellbeing for all victims in a family, and accountability for perpetrators of violence.

The Greenbook drew the interest of the federal government and after its publication the government developed a Greenbook Initiative that provided funding to support six demonstration sites in five states, technical assistance providers, and a national cross-site evaluation. A unique aspect of the federal initiative was that it drew support from across multiple government agencies, including the Office on Violence Against Women, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, the Office on Victims of Crime, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several units of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Children’s Bureau and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation. In addition to the federally funded demonstration sites many other communities around the United States have adopted the recommendations found in the Greenbook.

The results of the national cross-site evaluations comparing the six federally funded demonstration sites are becoming available and show positive outcomes as well as some mixed results. There have been increases in collaboration and changes in agency policies and practices, yet some of these changes appear transitory or partial.

Bibliography:

National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. (1999). Effective intervention in domestic violence and child maltreatment cases: Guidelines for policy and practice. Reno, NV: Author.
The Greenbook: https://www.rcdvcpc.org/the-greenbook.html

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