1000s of Kansans know what it means to be on the receiving end of the blunt forces of domestic violence. It's verbal, emotional and physical. It may leave no visible signs or send people to the hospital or put them in an early grave. Here's some numbers to think about. The Kansas Bureau of Investigations most recent report on domestic violence statewide says there were 220 2500 incidents in 2021. That was 600, fewer than in 2020, but 150 More than in 2019. Overall, only half of reported incidents lead to an arrest. And experts in the field say most incidents don't get reported to law enforcement anyway. Two thirds of victims were women, three fourths of perpetrators were men. This is a tough issue for the Kansas legislature to wrap its arms around, but Sedgwick County District Court Judge Phil journey is introducing a package of bills designed to improve the system's response to domestic violence. Mr. Germany, a former Republican state senator from Wichita joins the Kansas reflector today to pour over his ideas. Welcome.
Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
Yes. Thank you for being here. Thank you spent a lot of time on this issue. And I think you're a good person to talk to in that regard. So Mr. Journey you in the district court, it brings you closer to domestic violence than I think many people would be. Can you draw a bit of a picture of what it looks like from the bench?
Well, let's say I have 15 years on the bench. 25 years in practice. I did eight years as the Wichita Municipal Court, public defender, I dealt with all their prisoners for eight years. I have a lot of experience. It's not a day that goes by that I don't get something to eat and have to address some facet of domestic violence in one of the cases that I have. Currently, I'm in the family law department. I have the equivalent of 100,000 people's divorces, and paternity cases and child support enforcement. And once in five once every five weeks, I get to do protection from abuse and protection from stalking restraining orders to so I have lots of experience with
you do oh my gosh, I didn't realize it was quite that thorough. The stakes of all this are pretty high. The KPIs report says the 2021 these incidents of domestic violence led to 900 kidnappings, 170 forcible rapes, 100 strangulations, 3000, aggravated assaults and 4000 incidents of criminal damage to property. Wichita accounts for Sedgwick County accounts for a large proportion of these
a disproportionate amount. When I read that study, I was aghast because frankly, Sedgwick County's number one, not where we really want to be on this chart. And they had more incidents in the next three counties combined with significantly higher population. So the incident rate in Sedgwick County is significantly higher than the state average.
What would be the theory as to why that is,
I think part of it is the socio economic circumstances in which Tom because we're basically, you know, manufacturing, low to middle income. There, I see people every day that have significant economic stresses, and then of course, you throw the divorce and on top of it, then usually it's a financial train wreck, addiction, financial, you know, substance abuse, I, their substance abuse is a huge driver of the dislocation we see in our society,
or in judge journey, I have to hesitate because sometimes I might call you Senator journey.
That's fine. Yeah, you're not I don't have my dress on don't
think I can do that Judge journey, you've introduced a series of bills over the past few years. And you'll be seeking passage of some in the 2023 session, perhaps the best way to approach this is just kind of go one by one through your ideas. I appreciate I'll try to touch upon this first one. And you can kind of explain what the goal is and the objective and how it might workout. You propose that all law enforcement agencies in the state mandate training of their officers so that when they encounter somebody involved in domestic violence, they provide that person with information that might be helpful to them information about getting a protection from abuse or social services or financial assistance, and the officers there would complete what's perhaps called a lethality assessment to help also guide them and the court system in terms of making referrals for these individuals. That sounds right. Yes. Okay.
That's a that's an accurate rendition of that.
So tell us about how that would would attack this issue. Okay. Well,
first, let me say that it's not this is not a unique idea. You know, there's no plagiarism and, and legislation. And so there's this this type of provision and similar provisions are enacted in dozens of states across the country. So it's something that's proven to work. Often victims of domestic violence, they don't have any experience. They've never been in the court system except maybe for a speeding ticket. They have no idea what resources might be available to them. And often they feel trapped and unnecessarily so and so essentially, that one just requires law enforcement to provide them with the information of where to go get help. And it's not like extra super burdensome training. It's just basically somebody needs to do the legwork make the list of the safe houses, how you file a PFA. And we're trying to make that much easier now in the court system to because now it can all be pretty much internet based. And you don't have to, like drive 40 miles to the courthouse to do the paperwork like you used to, you still have to go to the hearing so
well, to get a protection protection from abuse order that you perhaps have to provide some sort of cause some sort of justification for why you want to impose this restriction on somebody else,
but aka can't be done remotely. And we do it remotely. Now in Sedgwick County, when it's my turn to do PF A's and PFS is I usually run about 100 cases a week. So about 20 a day. So some of these officers,
some of the some of these information you're talking about here could be provided by officers, but this was be more of a systematic approach.
Yes, yes. To make sure it gets done. I mean, if you do it, if you do it haphazard, it's not gonna get done, and somebody's not gonna get the information and God forbid, they're gonna have something
horrible and retrogene, you're gonna say, Okay, so
the lethality assessment is important to it's important for the victim. It's a very short questionnaire, it's like 10 questions, they have different ones in Spanish. And they have different ones for gay couples, and they have different ones for hetero couples. And so basically, the victims do not know how much danger they're in. And this lethality assessment is been adopted and used in many states. And it has been proven in studies to show that it does provide a reliable indicator of the level of danger that could be present in that relationship, it also provides would provide important information for the judge, it's important to close the information circle. You know, if you're like, on our first appearances, it said we can't you've got 5575 100 people in your courtroom that day for new cases that are coming into the system, you know, you need, you need to have a quick reference that says up, maybe I should put this guy on GPS, you know, because he won't leave her alone. Maybe I should put this guy on pretrial services, I think, you know, there's an issue, he's got a prior drug conviction. And, you know, there's allegations, and you know, maybe he just needs to pee for me, just to be sure that, you know, he's doing what he's supposed to while he's waiting on his case to be resolved. I
think that would just be a great help from you sitting on the bench looking at this blur of cases in front of you, if there was some sort of scoring methodology that would tip you off, tip you off as to maybe a larger issue?
Absolutely. I mean, you know, the tragedies that have just happened here in Topeka in the last seven days, say so much about what this legislation could do.
So you propose this before hasn't gotten much traction.
Some of them I started as early as 18. And then, you know, as as I would go to seminars, as a judge, and I'd like to steal somebody's idea from their state, and then I'd go, that's a great idea. And then I'd find their bill and find their legislation or their law. And then I, you know, some of these matters, and say, let's see if we can adapt this. You've been after it for a few years on some of these? Well, you know, even back in 2003 and 2008. When I was in the legislature, I still worked on this issue, along with many others.
All right, so let's pivot to the second piece of legislation you're interested in. You propose that law enforcement officers at a scene of an alleged domestic violence would try to use some training to determine the quote unquote, primary aggressor while on that on that domestic violence call. What's the benefit of this?
Okay, currently, Kansas statute is different from many other states that have similar language and similar provisions in their statute. And what this is intended to do. It gives law enforcement information and guidance in how to use that information, so that they can determine who's the primary aggressor, let's say put yourself in the law enforcement officer shoes for a moment, you're driving around, you get a call from dispatch, you go to the house, it's domestic violence, it's always a horrible tense situation. Everybody has injuries. Now, some injuries are aggressive in nature, and some entries are defensive in nature. In other words, someone trying to defend himself would, you know, like Scratch it or something like that, where someone that's being aggressive would be more violent, I suppose. And so also they that's usually when the law officers called to the scene. It's not the first time they've had an incident. And sometimes the pastry of a couple, or the parties involved in the incident can provide insight as to who's the primary aggressor. And often what happens is in Kansas, is that you know, the officers show up everybody's got injuries. He says she scratched me whatever, at or, you know, she says he Hit me whatever. And so everybody gets arrested for disorderly conduct. And so what the victim learns when they're simply trying to defend themselves and protect their kids, that if I call the police, I'm going to jail. So guess what happens the next time an incident comes, the police don't get called. And my experience has been that they don't generally these situations don't come down. It may undulate. And about it. Oh, it seems to always get worse until somebody gets some help.
I would think that this, this notion of a primary aggressor is interesting, because I imagine people who are domestic violence, abusers might strategize that before the cops got there. They might inflict upon themselves defensive looking wounds,
or that is, you know, well, they can inflict a wound on themselves. And I've certainly had cases like I bet it's happened way Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Or they'll be the first one to call 911 or they'll be the aggressor will be the first one to meet him at the at the curb, and then set to and then set the stage for the rest of the police interaction.
Interesting. All right. The third one is something called staggered sentencing. And I think this is a borrowed from an approach regarding driving under the influence convictions like third and fourth convictions, maybe you would set up a system where the person gets 90 days in jail, however, you take those in 30 day segments, and you would try to get people some assistance, some counseling, some help really intensive in that 30 days, and then evaluate them later. And if you have to apply the next 30 days, and the final 30 days of that penalty, if they're not improving, is that sort of track that
okay, okay, so that basically is the regiment, okay, so the judge would be given the option of using the standard sentencing provisions or to go with this route. Okay. All right. So we have these two kinds of felonies, they're kind of wobblers, because they're not punishable by more than a year in jail. And they're not punishable by prison time, they have to do their time in the county jail. And so that puts a financial burden on the counties to All right. And so for a third offense, misdemeanor battery, it elevates to a felony, the maximum penalty is 12 months and $2,500. Fine. The minimum is I think, a $200, fine, and then a $200 assessment for services and then a mandatory minimum of 90 days, generally, those sentences are imposed, because we don't have room at the jails anywhere they get two days are real jail, and then they do 88 days a house arrest. So essentially the biggest problem that we have, and it's a similar sentencing system on DUI, also 90 days to an ADA, at that a 12 month maximum. And so the problem we have, particularly with individuals who are of lower economic status, that don't have a lot of resources that they have to pay for some pretty expensive counseling. And so because it's not provided for them, often that is a problem, they find excuses, they don't get it done for whatever reason. And then you know, you have to extend their probation another year, because they have to get through it, or you have to PVM one or the other. And so what this does is it puts a carrot in front of the offender rather than just getting a stick ready for him. And so the carrot is that if they, they only have to do 30 days initially, but they have the understanding that they have to get certain landmarks met during their probation. And if they meet those Man Mark landmarks and our end, you know, treatment and don't reoffend and don't harass the person and don't violate their probation, the judge has the option of simply staying that next 30 day period. And then if they're off track, and they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, the judge can impose that 30 days. And then you know, he can go on with the probation. And so at the end, if they have everything done, if they've got it all paid off, if they've got all their treatment done, if they're behaving as they should and reporting as they should and doing what they're supposed to on probation, the judge can stay that last 30 Day sentence. And so it puts a carrot and a motivator to stay out of house arrest and spend that $1,000 on house arrest that they're going to spend and rather spend that $1,000 On Guess what? Treatment and they get that BIP especially in domestic violence. batterers intervention programs do much to reform the actual offenders behavior and to give the offender an understanding of what the consequences are of what they've done. Because most of the time, they don't understand it either.
They don't necessarily understand why they're being abusive.
The end they don't understand what happens to everybody around them when they are witches, which the consequences are severe and far reaching.
Yeah, let's just divert ourselves briefly, the consequences for kids will say,
okay, so I just finished a seminar on for judges on what are called aces and its adverse childhood experiences. And domestic violence is a huge driver of these adverse child experiences. And what happens, whether they're adolescents or preteen, or toddlers or whatever, is that they essentially it changes the way their brain develops, it changes the way, when they experienced the violence when they see it, when they see what someone they love get hurt, they end up having the fight or flight response that everybody has genetically in them. And the cortisol floods through their brain. And if they have repeated exposure to cortisol, and the other fight or flight hormones, that changes the way their brain develops. And they learned they learned from experience and how to treat others when they become adults. And so it basically increases the likelihood of the cycle of violence by seeing the violence.
Okay, very good. The fourth piece of legislation you're aiming for, is something that would increase the penalty, the sanction for violating restraining orders that are issued to try to protect people from further abuse, I think this may apply to second and third offenses. That's correct. So explain what
the bill would do. So currently, it would increase the severity level, a second offense is a misdemeanor under current statute, it would raise it to a low level felony, like alert severity level seven or eight, you know, the legislature could play with those numbers. So you know, I'm not I'm not really locked in on any of that. But it increases the penalty for a third one, from a level seven to a level four, which is pretty much presumptive prison, because by the time they violate that order, intentionally three times, I think they should be out, they get, you know, three strikes at your app. I have seen people that have been harassed for decades, and see what it does to them. And it changes the way they react in their life. Others,
it's hard for me to imagine, actually, but I can imagine, I feel that. So you have these pieces of legislation, are you optimistic that you can get some traction for the stuff in 2005, I've,
I've, you know, in five years, I got 30 bills passed when I was in the Senate, and I've gotten legislation passed after I left the Senate, and particularly on driver's licenses, and help people getting their privileges restored, and things like that, and had help for both Republicans and Democrats to get those things done. I think that, once I have the opportunity to make the case that I'll be able to close the deal, that these are all good bills, they're not expensive, they're not going to spend a ton of money. Not like that, no, not
reinventing the wheel. There's other states have done this. It's one of the advantages of looking at what other states have done, you can see kind of what works and maybe what didn't work so well. Right. I think it's great to draw from the experience of your neighbors,
I think I think you know that we have the and there's no reason to reinvent the wheel when somebody already has around one.
Yeah, I want to circle back to something you said about better intervention program. This is a six month program that aims to kind of reshape a person's mental framework. So they might avoid repeating Such damaging behavior. So that's out there. It's costly. It's more time consuming a greater commitment, but maybe a better reward. Some jurisdictions lean more to a short term anger management approach. It could be a one day class. And so and part of it is about costs. I know that and availability of counselors and a lot of other things. So we could you talk a little bit about that gap there between some short term idea and something more perhaps lasting?
Okay. Well, the legal source for all of this, it basically comes from Kansas homebrew constitutional provision, the city will pass a charter ordinance, and then they can take exception from state law and enforce their municipal ordinances at different in different ways than state law requires. The state has the option of saying, I we're going to occupy this area, and you're gonna do what we say. But they have not done so on this topic yet.
So what you're getting at is in Sedgwick County, there's more of a tendency to push the short term anger management is to insist upon better intervention programs,
the number of cases show you that the volume through which time Municipal Court is huge. And that is the that the more complicated monitoring that has to occur on alarmed erm Counseling Program is a significant burden on them. So that
could be part of the problem in Wichita is that people are cycling through this ineffective short term program. And for a lot of different reasons money and otherwise, they're not getting this broader help. That could be part of the issue of why there's such a concentration down
there. Anecdotally, I think that what you said is absolutely true. I don't have any statistics to like, do a survey, or were to look at a large population to see if there's a correlation. But anecdotally, I think you're hitting the nail on the head,
I wonder if you could touch upon another idea that's floated out there in the ethers, like, perhaps therapeutic courts, for families?
Well, we talked about that. And I appreciate that. That's what I'm exploring right now. I've got a working group together of family counselors and attorneys and probably get a couple of retired judges in on it. And essentially, it's another thing we're going to steal from Minnesota, Minnesota. And they have essentially a triage from the impression I got, I just went to a seminar today on that, that when the case comes in, they're basically triaged, and when they're found to be of concern, then they go to a little more analysis. And then if they're like, in a high conflict situation, they have all the services ready, and they just wrap that whole family around him and start trying to solve the problems at the very beginning, not at the end, you know, it could take, it could take six months, 18 months to bring a divorce to trial, depending on the lawyers and the complexity of the case. And by then the damage is done. And you're just picking up the pieces and been repeated and repeated and repeated. And then you know, the cycle continues. And it becomes
broader family. Yes. So the kids are growing up. I mean, you've been changed the doors takes us some time. But I would imagine some criminal prosecutions for battery or what have you, that is related to a domestic violence case could stretch on for a couple years, the way cases get punted around, there's no doubt that the consequences are lifelong. For the individuals that are victims, well, I think the last thing I was if you could talk about, just get back to the point of for some legislators, the Kansas legislature, as you know, as a citizen legislature, it's a part time legislature. And, and people are coming here from all kinds of different places and perspectives. And not everybody understands what it's like to be in a large urban center where there's a real mass of domestic violence issues. So how do you get legislators who aren't in tune with this, perhaps to listen to what you have to say?
Well, I think the first thing you have to do is educate them. And you do that by a number of different ways, you know, you could try right now, or, you know, having conversations and, and essentially, to try to educate them so that they understand first that there's a problem, then you help define the problem. And then you try to define the solution. And then you try to measure the outcomes of the solution. And so all of those things are really complicated, especially when you start messing with people's lives. 1000s of people and 1000s of court cases and courts all over the state of Kansas. So I expect that there will certainly be a learning curve, there always is, there's also going to be a need for a training curve. I think that, you know, if we look at, for example, what's going on in New York, you know, they had a great, they had what they thought was a great Red Flag Law, but they didn't train anybody on how to apply it. And then you know, people are falling through the system, but they're not getting red flag. So, you know, it's it's about more than simply enacting the legislation, it's following up on it, too. And making sure that the pieces are put in place so that the thing operates like it should. And there's a steep learning curve, you know, the I remember the first time I came back to the legislature, alright, because I was I was appointed in oh three, I had to run in Oh, four. I got elected. I came back in oh, five, and one of the freshmen there. They it was his first year. And I remember at the end of the session, he told me, you know, fill every piece of paper everybody gave me I measured it every day. And at the end of 90 days, it was over 90 feet.
Okay. Now, now at least it's electronic. So you're right. There's
always there's always a competition for the legislators attention.
Yes. The Introduction to being a legislature is like taking information in a firehose. Yeah.
Certain that kind of like what my traffic docket was, like, in which
all right, I think we're gonna leave it there. I want to thank our guests Phil journey, a Sedgwick County judge and a former Republican state senator, and I want to thank you for your effort and good luck with these bills.
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate the opportunity to bring this to your reader. Thank you.