They are the questions that can save your life and through the course of two plus years, the city of Baltimore believes they've done just that. "We really did embark on it as an experiment. It was a pilot project, we didn't know it was gonna work. We didn't know what the impact would be and by doing the pilot and doing the data, what we found is that it worked." Sheryl Goldstein is now the outgoing director of the mayor's office on criminal justice.
What's worked is the lethality assessment. It is a simple piece of paper with 13 questions, but now becoming as valuable of a law enforcement tool as the gun on an officer's hip. When responding to a domestic violence call, police have the victim take this test and based on the score offer immediate help through the House of Ruth. “Close to a thousand victims as a result of this project have gotten services that they wouldn’t have gotten including shelter, counseling, legal assistance and other types of support," said Goldstein.
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