Sixth meeting: Family violence

Ellen Siler, from Hubbard House, and Sallie O'Hara, from the Neighborhood Partnership, discussed the impact of domestic violence on Jacksonville's homicide rate. Several key programs have helped decrease domestic-violence-related homicides by 37 percent, even while the overall murder rate has been increasing. However, many of these programs are due to lose their funding. Ellen Siler's presentation is available here.

Of particular interest to the group was the research that showed that children who witness violence are far more likely to become violent, and the opportunity to intervene with these children early to help them not learn to be violent.

Committee discussion focused on the need to continue to support prevention programs, especially onces that are having demonstrable success. They also discussed creating a divorce court, similar to the drug court, that would provide some consistency in how domestic violence cases are treated.

One committee member ended the session by discussing his reaction to the murder of his son, and his initial feeling that we should be talking about murder on the streets, not domestic violence. However, he realized that we need to stop violence where it begins, and we can't deal with violence in the community if we don't stop the violence in our homes.

What are your thoughts?