Lawmakers hear data-driven testimony from justice reinvestment initiative
Sen. Brandon J. Storm, R-London, speaks during Friday’s meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary. A high-resolution photo can be found here.
FRANKFORT — The Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary received a presentation from a national policy group Friday about how Kentucky fares on tackling domestic violence and other justice-related issues.
Two experts from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, Ellen Whelan-Wuest, deputy division director of state initiatives, and David D’Amora, senior policy adviser, shared findings from a justice reinvestment initiative launched in 2023.
Through the initiative, state leaders partnered with the center to study domestic violence and intimate partner violence and recommend data-driven solutions.
Researchers scoured data from the state Department of Corrections, the Kentucky State Police, the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System and Kentucky courts, among others.
D’Amora said Kentucky faces a high prevalence of domestic violence. He said it’s a major driver of violent crime in the commonwealth, contributes to recidivism and consumes significant resources.
According to the presentation, about half of all adults in Kentucky experience sexual violence, physical violence or stalking in their lifetimes – about 48% of women compared to 47% of women nationally. For men in Kentucky, the number was 52% compared to 44% nationally.
D’Amora said the analysis showed that an average of approximately 22,000 incidents of interpersonal violence occurred from 2018 to 2022, with 60% of it involving an intimate partner. The other 40% involved child or elder abuse or other types of family violence.
“There’s been an increase in recent years in the case filings and in the temporary protective orders, but the number of granted permanent orders has declined,” D’Amora said.
Committee Co-Chair Sen. Brandon J. Storm, R-London, asked the presenters if they have statistics regarding the prevalence of civil domestic violence petitions or cases and companion criminal cases.
D’Amora said he wasn’t sure if the information was gathered from received data, but said he’d confer with research staff and let Storm know.
Storm said in 2024, the general assembly passed Senate Bill 319, which is related to crime victims’ compensation, and in 2025, legislators green lighted House Bill 38, which made the third offense of domestic violence a class D felony.
House Minority Whip Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington, thanked her colleagues for passing House Bill 38, saying it will help strengthen how re-offenses are handled.
Burke said service of process is an important issue, and the research will help legislators take a closer look at what they’re doing well and where there is room for improvement.
“I see that as I work in domestic violence court,” she said. “I know that many of the survivors that I represent come back week after week after week to preserve their orders and hope that the offender has been served. And I know that tragically in Fayette County, we just had a mass shooting perpetrated by someone who had an unserved protective order against him.”
House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, said the issues discussed during the meeting are timely because two deputy sheriffs were shot while serving a warrant related to family violence. He asked D’Amora to expand on a point from the presentation.
“I think you said Kentucky is one of the top three or four states that take domestic violence seriously. I want to ask you to elaborate on that and ask why do you say that,” Nemes said.
D’Amora said there are many factors.
“The amount of attention that Kentucky has paid, the bills that you have passed, the way that you do take it seriously, the impact that your victims’ services folks have had in the last several years in moving this forward, the seriousness with which the certification of VIP (violence intervention program) programing and looking for evidence-based programming that happens, the tracking of it, and the fact that you haven’t just said, ‘Oh, well. It’s just something that just happens.’ That is massively impressive that Kentucky has done that,” D’Amora said.
