Image Thanks to Yahoo News

Topeka, Kansas has come up with an interesting solution for the budget woes…decriminalizing domestic violence.

The Shawnee County District Attorney’s Office announced last month that, facing a 10 percent budget cut, they would stop prosecuting misdemeanors – including domestic violence case.

And how did the Topeka City Council respond?  Well, like any sensible municipality would – by threatening to repeal the section of the city code that bans domestic violence.

The supposed motivation behind this threat is that by repealing their own law against domestic violence, the City of Topeka will no longer have the responsibility or the ability to prosecute for domestic violence, putting the onus back on Shawnee County.

Topeka’s betting that the District Attorney won’t actually let domestic violence go unprosecuted.  They hope that their repeal would force the county to restart their prosecution.

While the DA’s Office and the City Council are busy playing politics with women’s lives (even though they both swear that they think domestic violence is a serious crime…just not one worth paying to prosecute), Victims’ Advocate Claudia Dombrowski warns that this game of chicken puts the community in danger.

[The City and County] need to invest in headstones, because these women are going to end up in cemeteries…No matter how political you want to be, or you want to play hardball with peoples lives, how can you in good conscious say it’s okay to repeal domestic battery as a crime in the city of Topeka just so you can get out of prosecuting them.  I’m terrified for these women.

So far, the DA has refused to prosecute 30 domestic violence cases since September and has released three offenders.  Domestic violence is already an under-reported crime, and the women who do come forward and prosecute are incredibly brave.   Refusing to prosecute abandons these women and also deters others facing domestic violence from coming forward if there’s no way to receive protection.

The City Council is set to vote on the code repeal on Tuesday, October 11th (what a nice way to honor Domestic Violence Awareness Month!).  Hopefully the Council will realize what Dombrowski and most of us learned as children – that two wrongs don’t make a right.