The simple answer to this question is, resources permitting, as many cases as the team feels it is able to review in order to better understand, intervene in, and prevent domestic violence and domestic homicide.

Cases for review can include:

• Closed cases (perpetrator has been convicted, most or all appeals have expired)
• Open cases (case is pending)
• Child deaths
• Familicide (where entire family is murdered)
• Near deaths
• Murder-suicide (a type of closed case, where the perpetrator is dead)
• Suicide
• All deaths of women between certain ages
• High-profile or cases deemed significant by community

The Philadelphia Death Review Team reviews hundreds of women’s deaths per year, taking perhaps 30 minutes per review. The idea in Philadelphia is to identify as many cases as possible where women died as a direct or indirect result of domestic violence. Conversely, reviews like the Charan Investigation (a homicide-suicide case in San Francisco in 1990) seek to identify system failures through an extremely detailed analysis of one case. Some jurisdictions review a large number of cases in summary fashion, others delve into individual cases in great depth. Both approaches have the potential to improve the delivery of multiple services to victims of domestic violence.