Provide a thorough review of the CODIS Hit Notification guidance document KY SAKI is developing to be distributed to local law enforcement agencies across the state.
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KY SAKI sent the CODIS Hit Notification document to be reviewed.
We went back to the Site to ask for it as a Word Document. The KSP officers that authored the document seemed resistant to edits/suggestions. But, Carey, the Site Coordinator, requested that we still provide recommendations to improve the document. SAKI TTA review of the document.
After Jim and Pattie both reviewed the document, I put all of the comments together to send to the site. Additionally, Jim and I crafted an intro email for the attachment.
Additional recommendations are in the document.
Carey,
Thanks for sending the CODIS Hit Notification document. We had few SAKI TTA Team members review with similar comments that have been summarized in the attached document. If you would like for Jim to discuss with the team, I can check on his availability. When you send the version for us to send to BJA, if the SAKI TTA recommendations don’t fit for this document and your site, BJA has in the past asked for a short explanation or response. If this happens, we’ll need this information before we submit the final version to BJA.
Overall, we think this is a great resource for the local areas. There are a few common themes that you’ll see in the comments:
1. From an evidence-based practice perspective, we hesitate to use the term Best Practices for this document. There are definitely some Best Practices illustrated in the document, but as a whole, best practices are found after using a guidance for long enough that you can show it is working at multiple levels. SAKI TTA recommends that you use the term ‘Recommendations’ or ‘Guidance’ because we feel you’ll probably find along the way that it needs to be revised as you find what does and doesn’t work for the varying types of agencies that you have across the state. We especially do not think the term Best Practices should be used for Victim Notification. Even Dr. Rebecca Campbell, who has years of experience with Victim Notification, doesn’t believe we have identified Best Practices around Victim Notification since we really don’t know what long term impacts this will have.
2. This document is reading like it’s also covering your Victim Notification Protocol. If you are considering it to be a dual document, additional information and guidance should be included which further describes victim notification processes. If it is supposed to be used in tandem with another VN Protocol, it should reference that document and say where that document can be found. That should be mentioned throughout the document to ensure that a law enforcement officer should be looking at both.
3. Another common thought was that the document tends to read like the person already has a pretty good foundation on this topic. Is that who your intended audience is? If this is going to be sent to agencies across the state, do we know if this audience of investigators that will be asked to work these cases has an understanding of multidisciplinary practices, victim-centered approaches, sexual assault investigation strategies, and DNA testing and CODIS? We felt there are areas where there could be additional information provided to ensure follow through when CODIS Hit notifications occur which are conveyed in the comments. We want a goal of sustainable response considering high caseloads, staffing turnover, and necessary culture change around sexual assault cases. It’s always good to remember that with the way the National SAKI Program is populating CODIS there could be CODIS Hits that happen now, in a year, and in several years down the road. What will happen when one of those CODIS Hits comes after the KY SAKI Project ends? Additionally, what happens if the CODIS Hit from a SAKI case ends up hitting to a case that isn’t involved in SAKI, how will that local agency respond?
Let me know if you have any questions.
Carey let me know that she had updated the CODIS document with our recommendations. I let her know the process for submitting the GAN.
She emailed Angela and Mila. She received a few more requests for changes, which she made and resubmitted to them. Mila sent instructions for uploading to GMS.
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