Criminal / Civil Case Supervision

“Defendants” charged with misdemeanors relating to Domestic Violence, or “respondents” in Civil Injunction cases can be referred to the Advocate Domestic Violence Assessment/Supervision Unit.

The Advocate Program’s Domestic Violence Unit is responsible for supervising all cases referred out of the 11th Judicial Circuits Domestic Violence Court both for criminal cases (diversion and probation) as well as civil cases. It is the responsibility of the Supervision Specialists within the unit to advise clients accordingly by explaining any / all conditions of their court orders to them, to ensure compliance with those orders and report back to the court compliance status.

In the criminal court, the unit employees a Court Coordinator whose primary responsibility is to attend court and report the status of all cases at what is called a Judicial Review Calendar (JRC). That positions notifies all domestic violence treatment providers of their respective cases on calendar for the JRC, prepares all files and speaks to the Judge with the defendant present as well as the State Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s office.

In the civil court, the Court Coordinator’s function is a little different. These cases are not placed on review calendars like the criminal cases. These cases are only placed on calendar once the respondent in the case is no longer in compliance and the Supervision Specialist has returned the case to court. Those calendars are referred to as Civil Contempt calendars and the Court Coordinators function in this court is to notify the court of the terms that the respondent is no longer in compliance with according to the order.

Within the unit, there are 4-5 Supervision Specialist who have caseloads on the average from 300-500 cases. Their primary responsibility is to supervise these cases by reviewing them at different time intervals while the client is in the program. They are to notify clients when they are not in compliance with any of the court ordered conditions and for those who fail to comply, the Supervision Specialists informs the referring Court accordingly based on the type of case they are supervising.