The first family justice center co-locating staff from private and public agencies to serve victim-survivors of intimate partner violence opened in 2002 in San Diego, California. The model quickly rose in popularity, assisted by grants from the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women as well as other 
government institutions and private foundations. Family justice centers have proliferated across the United States and are being exported to other countries through funding by the U.S. State Department. The appeal of the family justice center model is understandable. Ideally, the model provides “wraparound” services that are both coordinate and centralized, so that victim-survivors address all their needs, from safety-planning to medical assistance, from legal services to social services, without having to retell their story. 

An inter-disciplinary review of research, however, reveals few published studies of the effectiveness of this organizational model. Rather, scholars have pointed out that despite the colocation of service providers, victim-survivors must still repeat their traumatic experiences due to confidentiality rules as well as the different aims of each provider. Moreover, core values of the family justice center model include an emphasis on prosecution and offender accountability that runs counter to the interests of victim-survivors who may be more reticent to engage with the criminal legal system, particularly marginalized victim-survivors. In this respect, the rise of the family justice center model represents another iteration of how law and policy on 
intimate partner violence has been centered around the criminal legal system to the detriment of marginalized groups. 

Negar Katirai is the Director of the Gender Justice Workshop at the University of Arizona’s College of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute. As Director of the Gender Justice Workshop, Ms. Katirai supervises law students in conducting research and advocacy to influence decision-makers and promote policies to advance gender empowerment, equality, and equity. Ms. Katirai has also supervised 
students in providing legal representation to victim-survivors of intimate partner violence, including helping survivors obtain orders of protection against their abusers and advising them on custody, housing, and immigration law issues. Her scholarship investigates questions that arise in the practice of family and intimate partner violence law and seeks to promote conversation and collaboration between practitioners and 
academics. Ms. Katirai was awarded a Fulbright to study Domestic Violence Fatality Reviews in Australia in 2022. She has been recognized for her community contributions and scholarship by the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona and by her peers as a Distinguished Public Service Scholar. She also teaches Family Law and a Seminar on Intimate Partner Violence.

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