Alana Bowman has identified a number of possible steps involved in creating review teams (Bowman, Alana. 1997. “Establishing Domestic Violence Review Teams.” Domestic Violence Report, August/September 1997, pp. 83, 93-94.)

We paraphrase the following:

  • Decide upon an agency to house the project, send out notices, gather information, and generate reports.
  • Identify key agencies and their possible representatives and alternates.
  • Require everyone involved to sign confidentiality agreements, both individually and on behalf of their agencies.
  • Define goals, purposes, and philosophies of the team.
  • Develop procedures and protocols for what the team will review, including the scope of review and types of cases that will be reviewed. For instance, only closed cases, murder-suicides, or all cases within one year.
  • Select cases to review.
  • Have team members conduct reviews of their own agency involvement in a case and contribute this information when team review convenes. The team can then synthesize respective contributions into an overall review.
  • Create a timeline of events leading up to the tragedy, identify possible red flags, determine agency involvement and the degree of coordination and collaboration, create rational recommendations to implement in the near future.
  • Summarize review.
  • Decide upon dissemination of review findings.
  • Develop aggregate data from many reviews and decide upon public dissemination and formatting.

As a primary order of business, teams first need to develop protocols regarding the above points before conducting the first review. Teams also can do practice reviews using hypothetical situations. (Contact the NDVFRI for training tools and hypotheticals.)

Existing teams examine intimate partner homicides, for the most part, although many more deaths are linked with and traceable to domestic violence. Teams have paid less attention to sexual competitor killings, women’s suicides, family homicides, or mercy killings, but these types of case reviews are also important. Teams that form in areas with few or no intimate partner homicides might consider exploring cases such as women’s suicides. Here they might begin by exploring whether the person who killed herself had injuries consistent with prior domestic violence, or whether police had ever visited her home on a domestic disturbance call, or whether she ever was the recipient of a domestic violence injunction or restraining order. They might also examine perpetrator suicides.