Failings of the system

In working with victims of domestic violence over the last few months, my eyes have really been opened to things I never realized existed. But what has bothered me most is not the violence, but the way our system has failed so many individuals, allowing the violence to continue.

I am horrified at how just about every individual I speak with has lost confidence in the police and the job they do and has lost confidence in the criminal system to charge criminals. In cases where there is clear evidence and clearly a crime has been committed the DA's office will choose not to charge for reasons unknown to the rest of us. When individuals call 911, an officer does not always come out. At times when a clear domestic abuse has taken place that likely included violence, police will not even always remove one of the two from the property. And in times where a male is a victim, the police will often separate the victim from his children.

In one case a Spanish speaker said that the first time she called the police they told her that her address did not exist so they couldn't come out to help her. And on the second occasion that she called, the police stated that no one spoke Spanish and again could not help her.

I also am dismayed when I sit through restraining order hearings and the Commissioner denies the restraining order just because the police were never called even if the abuser admits to something. Lack of police involvement is in no way an indication of lack of violence. Remember, as I stated in the previous paragraphs, many individuals have lost confidence in police who never did anything on previous occasions when they called and so feel like it is a waste of time to call the police. And in a system, where the woman is always portrayed as the victim, male victims know that it is a waste of time to contact police for help.

And all this was really driven home this weekend, as I saw on the news a story of an individual who had been murdered and the suspect is her ex-boyfriend. Upon looking at open records online, I saw that this victim had attempted to get a restraining order against him recently and was denied it even though there were pending charges for the abuser of domestic abuse against this same victim. Would a restraining order have saved this young girl's life? Maybe not. But maybe, the victim would have had a chance to contact the police the second the abuser showed up instead of having to wait for violence to occur at a point when it was too late.

Quality ranking determines state funding of day-cares

An article in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled "Day-care providers to be paid based on quality under Doyle plan" caught my eye. It explains Governor Doyle's plan to create a ranking system based on quality of care that will determine how much state funding day-cares get. The ranking would be based on "the education level of the staff, the learning environment in the center as well as business practices, and the health and well-being of children."

I have two issues with this concept.

1. True quality of care can't be measured objectively. Educational level of staff does not necessary equate with quality care-givers. And things like the health and well-being of children can't be measured. Plus a certain type of learning environment with one set of children may not be appropriate at all for a different set of children.

2. This type of plan allows rich day-cares to get richer and poor day-cares to get poorer. If we cut funding significantly to a day-care that can't hire teachers with a master's degree, how can we expect them to find the money to find teachers with more education. We will be seeing this same thing in schools that are not meeting the goals of No Child Left Behind. Eventually funding will get cut, and the schools will only get worse.

Instead let's deal with the real issue here: fraud. Instead of focusing on quality and spending money to do so in such a poor economy, we need to just focus on enforcing the expectations that come with state funding of day-cares. And let parents set expecations of quality by choosing where they send their children.

Issues affecting non-English speakers

I attended a hearing with a Spanish-speaking client today (my first client where I have been the translator). We lost unfortunately. Although all of the attorneys that I work with lost in front of this Commissioner this week in cases where we should have won. So I'm not sure what was up this week.

But what I was most frustrated with was the disadvantages non-English speaking clients face in our court system. In addition to the issues associated with having a translator that I spoke about in this post, today the translator didn't keep up with the translation and left out pieces, sometimes critical pieces, when translating into English. Usually this is a very good translator so it surprised me a bit. But then I realized that the Commissioner was fluent in Spanish so for the purpose of today's hearing, it really didn't matter how much the translator translated. But as we discussed the de novo review process with our client afterwards, I realized that the transcript of today's hearing would not very accurately reflect what the petitioner and respondent had actually said, which could be a huge hindrance to a fair de novo review.

Law School Case Briefs

I recently found this website with case briefs related to many typical law school courses. It may be useful to those in law school now and something I want to check back on when I attend law school.

Mayoral control of MPS

Governor Doyle and his supporters are proposing a change to WI public schools that would give the Mayor of Milwaukee line item veto power of the Milwaukee Public School's budget as well as other control. There was an article in today's Milwauke Journal Sentinel. What just doesn't make sense to me about this proposal is why anyone would think we could improve public schools by giving someone with no education background or understanding basically sole control of the school system. To me that sounds like setting us up for bigger failures.

Yes, we need reform. And yes, that may mean brining in some from outside of the education field to give a different perspective. But to give sole control to one man with little to no knowledge of best practices in education?