By Tom Gantert
Legal News
Judge Darryl Mazur says he can detect the signs of domestic violence in his court room almost instantly.
The Chief Judge of Jackson County's 12th District Court attributes that to the seven years he's overseen the Aggression Court, a specialty court set up to reduce repeat offenders.
Mazur said Jackson's Aggression Court was patterned after a similar court started in Washtenaw County by Judge Elizabeth Pollard Hines.
In Washtenaw County's Prosecutor's Office, a Domestic Violence Unit employs an Assistant Prosecutor and a Victim Advocate who are exclusively assigned to domestic violence cases.
Before Jackson's Aggression Court was established, each judge handled a domestic violence case differently, Mazur said.
Mazur said he can hear the signs of domestic violence in the comments of defendants in his courtroom.
"I've learned a lot," Mazur said, noting that seminars and so many years on the job have significantly added to his knowledge of domestic violance.
Mazur said anger management courses were a common sentence most judges handed out. But Mazur said they now understand domestic abuse involves a pattern of controlling behavior that can't be addressed just by anger management
"I don't think the judges appreciated that," Mazur said.
Mazur said monitoring of sentencing of defendants was sometimes lax before Aggression Court was established. He said there have been times a defendant would be sentenced to a 26-week intervention course and he'd find out eight months later the defendant never started the course.
He said now the first review is within 45 days. During the 15-month probation, the defendant may meet with Mazur as many as five to seven times.
"We are much more mindful of the compliance with the intervention programs," Mazur said.
After being found guilty, the defendant is typically placed on probation for 15 months and required to complete a "batterer's intervention program." The programs last from 26 to 52 weeks.
There have been 580 people who have graduated from Aggression Court. Mazur said they've seen a reduction in repeat offenders from 28 to 9 percent.
Jackson Attorney Al Brandt said there's a big incentive for defendants to complete Aggression Court.
"By law, if it is a first offense, they complete the course and the case goes away like nothing ever happened," Brandt said. "There is a huge benefit to the defendant. And four to five years down the road, you are not seeing these people again."
Brandt credited the court's counselors for the success.
"The counselors don't just put square pegs in round holes. Each person that comes in doesn't have the same underlying issue. It takes some time to figure out what is going on."
He said the counselors work hard to figure out how best to address each person's anger issue. Over the years, he said, they've set up programs that are defendant specific, a difficult but important task.
Published: Mon, Jan 9, 2012
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