| Summary: | The study focused on domestic violence victims whose alleged batterers were free on bond with a no-contact order (NCO) as a condition of their release in Lexington County, South Carolina between 2005 and 2008. The project involved a prospective, randomized experimental study in which 466 NCO cases were randomly assigned to either the current level of NCO enforcement (the control condition, N=229) or to proactive enforcement (the treatment condition, N=237). An additional 51 interim control cases were enrolled in the study during a coverage gap between the two officers that implemented the treatment condition over the course of the study. The treatment condition involved the following intervention: (1) a special domestic violence investigator assigned by the jurisdiction's sheriff proactively "checked in" with the "treatment" group of victims to verify that they understood the NCO and to monitor compliance; (2) the investigator provided advice on mobilizing law enforcement and collecting evidence to help sanction the offender if the order was violated. Data were collected from official Lexington County Sheriff's Department (LCSD), Criminal Domestic Violence Court (CDVC), and Office of Diversion Programs (ODP) records (Dataset 1, Offender Data). Efforts were made to interview victims at six weeks (Dataset 2, Time 1 Victim Interview Data, N=141) and six months (Dataset 3, Time 2 Victim Interview Data, N=100) after the gateway arrest. Dataset 4 (Combined Time 1/Time 2 Victim Interview Data, N=97) include overall measures for respondents who completed both the Time 1 and Time 2 interviews. The victim interviews include measures on background characteristics, life experiences, circumstances surrounding the "gateway incident" which resulted in the case being enrolled in the study, and subsequent victimization experiences and no-contact order compliance levels.
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