A.      Disposition of Cases
        Of the 355 total persons charged with intimate domestic violence crimes, 53 cases were sent to the Washington County Prosecutor’s Office as felonies or involved juvenile offenders and one felony case was sent to the Benton County Prosecutor’s Office.  Deducting these 54 total cases, there were 301 cases handled by the City of Springdale.  The following chart sets out the dispositions on the 301 misdemeanor cases as of the date of this publication, October 18, 2007.
       Fifty-three of the 259 convictions involved cases in which the charge was amended from a domestic crime to a different criminal charge, such as harassment or disorderly conduct (most of the 53 cases were amended to disorderly conduct).  Most of the cases amended involved cases in which the initial aggressor could not be proven and the victim would not cooperate with the prosecution, or could not be located.
B.      Conviction Rate
        Deducting the pending cases and the failure to appears, there have been a total of 279 misdemeanor domestic violence cases adjudicated, of which 259 defendants were convicted, which equates to a conviction rate of approximately 93%.  Even if you deduct the 53 cases that were amended to a different criminal charge, the conviction rate equates to 74%.

C.  Comparing the Conviction Rate
        How does the conviction rate in Springdale compare with other jurisdictions?  There are not a great amount of studies on conviction rates in domestic violence cases available, but two studies on conviction rates were reviewed and compared to those conviction rates of the City of Springdale.  One study was conducted by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy of the Arizona State University and included information on the conviction rates in all counties in Arizona in 2004. [1]  The study showed that the domestic violence conviction rate for all the counties in Arizona was 46.5% for individuals convicted.  The highest conviction rate on individuals convicted was in Yuma County, Arizona, with a conviction rate of 71.6%.  The lowest conviction rate shown in the study on individuals convicted was 34.4% in Greenlee County, Arizona.  The largest county, Maricopa County, had a conviction rate of 40.8%.  In another study with Richard R. Peterson, Ph.D., as the Project Director, the New York City Criminal Justice Agency issued a report in April 2003 entitled, “Combating Domestic Violence in New York City:  A Study of DV Cases in the Criminal Courts.”[2]  In this report, case outcomes in criminal courts were included for the third quarter of 1998 in three New York City boroughs.  This study found in DV cases the Bronx convicted 53%, Manhattan convicted 28%, and Brooklyn convicted 17%.
D.      Treatment Options
        Often times when persons are convicted of intimate domestic violence, they are sentenced to counseling.  A total of 97 defendants in domestic violence cases handled through Springdale District Court were ordered to complete counseling.  Most at the Domestic Abuse Intervention Program at Ozark Guidance Center.
E.      No Drop Policy
          As far as prosecution, intimate domestic violence is different than any other crime prosecuted.  In most intimate domestic violence cases, the victim remains loyal to the offender and in many cases the victim tries to get the charges dropped.  The Springdale City Attorney’s Office has a policy that a domestic abuse case will not be dismissed solely because the victim requests that charges be dismissed.  Each time a victim of domestic abuse requests or demands that the City Attorney’s Office drop charges against their intimate, we point out to them that domestic abuse is a crime against the State, and therefore dropping charges is not up to the victim.  We also try to make this policy clear in Court if the defendant pleads guilty.
        The goal of the City Attorney’s Office is to provide adequate containment of the domestic violence offender by effective prosecution while assisting and protecting the victim(s) of domestic violence.  Our office encourages the victims to be present at the phase of trial at which guilt or innocence is determined and every effort is made to allow the victim to be heard if the defendant pleads guilty.  If the victim becomes uncooperative, we refer the victim to our “no drop policy,” including an explanation of the reasons for the policy and the goal of the City Attorney’s Office (to avoid future violence to the victim and the other family members in the victim’s family).
        It is quite common for the victims of intimate domestic violence to be more upset with our office’s “no drop policy” than are offenders.  Victims are often times under extreme pressure and this has to be taken into account by prosecutorial authorities.  Some of these pressures may include economic dependence on the offender, emotional ties to the offender, fear of retaliation, pressure from other family members, etc.  However, if offenders could escape criminal liability in every case the victim would not cooperate in prosecution, it is estimated that more than half of our cases would result in the offender escaping criminal liability.