In 1975, Vera’s focus on court processes led to one of our first projects concerning people who had been harmed by crime. The Victim/Witness Assistance Project sought to improve their participation by, among other things, notifying witnesses of upcoming court appearances and providing day care inside the courthouse. Although successful in some ways, the project never convinced uncooperative witnesses to appear. Project data and subsequent research showed why: nearly half of all victims of felony-level crimes had prior relationships with the perpetrator and did not seek a court solution to their conflict. Our lesson: seeking justice in some cases may require looking beyond the system’s traditional boundaries.
     We are still applying this lesson more than 30 years later. To improve services for people with disabilities and Deaf individuals who are at high risk of domestic and sexual violence, our Accessing Safety Initiative (ASI) facilitates cross-disciplinary training between domestic violence service providers and those who work in disability organizations—two groups with shared interests but little history of collaboration.
     Two new programs—like ASI, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women—are poised to extend this tradition. The Promising Practices Initiative will document best practices for addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking by identifying those that apply when key players—advocates, law enforcement, prosecutors, and the courts—work together. The other project focuses on supervised visitation programs, in which children meet with non-custodial parents under the watchful eye of a third party. Born out of the child advocacy field, supervised visitation is not typically designed to address the safety issues involved in domestic violence cases. This project’s success will depend on our ability to link child-welfare advocates with advocates from the domestic violence field.
     Common Justice, our new demonstration project with the Brooklyn courts, crosses traditional boundaries as well. Its core activity is to directly involve those harmed by crime in meaningful dialogue with young people accused of felonies, resulting in sanctions other than prison. But it has a parallel emphasis on providing victim services for young men of color, who are a large part of the victim population but rarely served by traditional purveyors of this support.
     Well defined disciplines and people who have long been providing services from a distinct perspective can resist change—often for very good reasons. Yet I’m optimistic that when we look back in another 30 years, these projects also will have accomplished much to be proud of. 

—Michael Jacobson