This is the fourth installment of the Best Practice Assessment series. Click to read the previous installments.
With their system maps in hand, teams are ready to move on to review case files and policies—the core of the BPA process.
Gather Documents
Case Files
Each team gathers about 5-15 adjudicated case files to review. The number of cases reviewed depends on the size of the county, the focus of the review, and whether the team has decided to look at a very specific type of case (i.e., only felony strangulation cases) or at a snapshot of various case types (i.e., misdemeanor, felony, no billed, and/or dismissed).
The content of the files to be reviewed depends on the team’s BPA focus. For example, if a team is focusing on patrol response, they will gather patrol incident or arrest reports. A team focusing on prosecution charging decisions will gather prosecution case files. Each team makes its own decision on what information needs to be redacted, which team member will collect the case files, and how they will be distributed amongst members. All team members must agree on the parameters of sharing cases and be committed to transparency during case reviews.
Policies
If any written polices surrounding domestic violence response exist within the focus of the BPA, the responsible agencies provide copies to the team. In many cases, an official agency policy regarding domestic violence may not exist—that’s ok! There might be protocols or tools used in responding to DV cases, such as: 911 call-taking scripts, pocket cards, risk assessment tools, matrices for evaluating bail, etc., and those should be pulled for review.
Conduct Reviews
Armed with the relevant checklist of core best practices for their BPA focus, team members begin the case file review.
One BPA checklist is completed per case file. First, members read the case file without making any notes. Then, they go back to the file with the checklist in hand, checking off all best practices that are relevant to the case and noting specific examples of what was done well and what was missing.
Some teams divide and conquer this task, with each member reviewing a handful of cases on their own time, then bringing their findings to the meetings to discuss. Others choose to read the cases ahead of time, but go through the checklists together during meetings.
Policy reviews also use a checklist to look at how a policy has been constructed to reflect principles, procedures, linkages, and monitoring that are consistent with best practices.
Throughout the review process, the team meets regularly and begins to identify common issue areas where they may want to recommend changes. But, before finalizing their findings and recommendations, there’s one more data gathering method to complete: conducting survivor focus groups.
In upcoming issues, we will dive deeper into the remaining steps of the BPA process:
- Step 4 – Conduct Survivor Focus Groups
- Step 5 – Develop Findings and Recommend Changes
- Step 6 – Write the BPA Report