A grant given to the Ingham County Prosecuting Attorney’s office will be used to restart a former program for domestic violence victims and offenders.
The 2010-12 “Community Defined Solutions” grant, worth $367,351, will fund three positions for the Domestic Assault Response Team, or DART, Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III said. The grant became effective Oct. 1, but the Ingham County Board of Commissioners approved the grant Tuesday night.
The grant is from the U.S. Department of Justice of Violence Against Women. Although the grant was awarded to the Ingham County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, the Lansing 54-A District Court Probation Department and End Violent Encounters will serve as sub-contractors in providing services.
The positions include an assistant prosecutor, 54-A District Court probation officer and a case coordinator with the Circuit Court Personal Protection Order office.
The high number of domestic violence cases in Lansing makes the DART program important in Ingham County, Dunnings said. Domestic cases also can be difficult to prosecute for multiple reasons, such as a lack of cooperation from the victim or the victim minimizing the incident.
“The DART program is aimed at repeat offenders. We can have somebody who can concentrate their efforts really on that population,” Dunnings said. The program also is used against offenders who use particularly severe methods of abuse, such as strangulation, motor vehicles or weapons.
Although the DART program is used mainly in Lansing, Dunnings said the program occasionally will look at cases from elsewhere in Ingham County, including East Lansing. However, the program focuses on Lansing because the city is the largest in the county, said Anethia Brewer, court administrator for Lansing 54-A District Court Probation Department.
“The DART grant is dedicated toward domestic violence cases and resolution and treatment of them,” Brewer said. “We dedicate an officer that solely supervises the domestic violence cases that go into the DART program.”
The DART program was approved in 2002 and launched in 2003, said Robin Osterhaven, chief probation officer for Lansing 54-A District Court. The program was funded again in 2005 and 2007. In December 2009, the grant was not renewed and funds ran out. The program has been discontinued until now.
The current grant will expire in September 2012. Dunnings said he does not know if the program will be funded after that point.
He said he is focused on having DART fully functional as soon as possible.
“We’re concerned, but it’s not over something we have any control,” Dunnings said.
“We’re just trying to get (DART) up and running.”
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