Leigh Goodmark (’95), Professor of Law, Co-Director, Clinical Law Program, and Director of the Gender Violence Clinic at the University of Maryland School of Law, authored a post for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) Blog proposing immediate steps we can take to support victims of officer-involved violence and advocating abolition feminism to end reliance on the criminal legal system in response to intimate partner and sexual violence (“Who Watches the Watchers: Domestic Violence and Law Enforcement,” Apr. 21). “We can empower non-carceral first responders to address victims’ needs and escort them safely to hospitals or other forms of care. We can build and support community-based transformative justice projects that empower communities to intervene in the aftermath of violence in order to establish accountability without relying on police. We can examine laws like the Violence Against Women Act to reconsider how they require or incentivize anti-violence agencies to collaborate with police. . . . Criminalization cannot be an effective response to gender-based violence when those policing the crime and those committing it are often one and the same.”