(Host) Governor Howard Dean signed a bill into law Thursday that supporters hope will lead to the development of additional programs to prevent cases of domestic violence. The legislation creates a commission that will review all domestic violence fatalities in Vermont. In the past 11 years, 53% of all homicides in the state were related to cases of domestic violence.
Burlington Representative Mark Larson is the lead sponsor of the bill:
(Larson) "We will look into our community systems to make sure that those systems are working well and to see what we can learn from a situation in which a death occurred. So we’ll review the different strengths and weaknesses in our systems so that in the future we can hopefully prevent deaths related to domestic violence."
(Host) The commission will be funded using a grant from the Justice Department.