Coordinated Community Response

Duluth is not just any other city. When it comes to public safety for women, Duluth is looked to worldwide.

DAIP’s Intervention Project team was the first in the nation to coordinate the efforts of police, local courts and battered women’s shelters to make victims safer and hold batterers accountable. Known as the Duluth Model, this interagency approach has become the leading community model for responding to domestic violence.

The Duluth Model is an interagency approach that helps local police, law enforcement, probation, the courts, and the wider community protect battered women.

“There are not many police departments that have advocates working in the department next to domestic violence investigators. We have found this close relationship has consistently improved our response to the number one reason women have to go to the emergency room—domestic violence.” – Gordon Ramsay, Chief of Police, Duluth, MN

“The information we receive from DAIP’s intervention team provides our office with background information that is essential in achieving the best results in court to protect battered women and hold offenders accountable.” – Mary Asmus, Assistant City Attorney, Duluth, MN

“We recently had the privilege of coming to DAIP in Duluth, MN, for their Coordinated Community Response training. After working in the battered women’s movement for thirty years, it was wonderful to come to the “Do and Think Tank” of the movement and to see what they have done in Duluth to create and sustain a true victim/survivor-centered CCR. We heard from many of the people and agencies who were, and continue to be, involved in the maintenance of the DAIP vision. There is nothing fancy about DAIP. What it represents is the ongoing, hard work of people who are committed to the vision that Ellen Pence and her colleagues established years ago – to listen to battered women, to regard them as the true experts, to create a community-based response with multiple agencies that has their safety as their chief concern, and to provide men who abuse an alternative to violence. The DAIP has never lost sight of its core values and principles. Their CCR training is the most important and inspiring training I’ve attended in years.” – Kit Gruelle, BA, CCR Training Participant

Better interagency coordination means better use of information to stop the worst and highest risk offenders. Your financial contribution to DAIP’s intervention work translates into prevention in our high-risk cases.