Holistic Responses to IPV Cases: Enhancing Accountability and Survivor Safety

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Kristie Puckett Williams co-founded KEP2 (Squared), an advocacy and strategy consulting firm led by people directly impacted by the criminal legal system. Her direct experience with poverty, drug addiction, domestic violence, and incarceration has led her to pursue a career in policy and advocacy. She is an issue area expert on the conditions of confinement for women and girls, including pregnant women and girls in carceral facilities. Puckett also serves as the Chair of the Women in Incarceration Workgroup for the State Reentry Council Collaborative and as a commissioner on the North Carolina Commission on Racial & Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System (NC CRED). She holds an M.A. in Human Services Counseling: Addiction and Recovery Counseling. Kristie was recently awarded the highest honor by the N.C. Attorney General, the Dogwood Award, for her tireless advocacy for incarcerated pregnant women. Kristie serves on several boards for national and statewide organizations and as an advisor on many research projects, lending her lived expertise to research.

Orleny Rojas is CEPP’s Senior Manager for Racial Equity and Justice. She supports the Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research initiative and is helping expand CEPP’s portfolio of racial equity and community engagement work aimed at addressing racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system and integrating the expertise of people directly impacted by the system. Before joining CEPP, Ms. Rojas oversaw the Supervised Release Program in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island as Deputy Director of Criminal Court Operations. She led a team of social service practitioners who partnered with community organizations to improve pretrial outcomes. Ms. Rojas has over 12 years of experience working with various criminal justice and community stakeholders to center and address the needs of vulnerable populations. Previously, she was the Court Manager for the Court-Based Intervention Resource Team, which secured—with appropriate community program interventions and monitoring—the release of people who flagged for mental health at Rikers Island. Ms. Rojas holds a BS in business administration from Fordham University, an MSW from Fordham University, and a JD from Hofstra University.

Ms. Thomforde Hauser is the Senior Director of Community Accountability and Engagement for Gender and Family Justice Programs at the Center for Justice Innovation in New York, NY. Working from a perspective of social justice and grounded in collaboration Rebecca engages communities to identify internal strengths and challenges in their efforts to address domestic and sexual violence, provides on-going support in those efforts, including training to judges, court and community stakeholders on a variety of domestic violence issues, focusing on evidence-based best practices, abusive partner intervention programming and coordinated community responses. In addition, Rebecca provides support to the Tactics and Choices Program staff who provide classes for supervised release clients with IPV charges throughout New York City. For five years, Ms. Thomforde Hauser was the Domestic Violence Accountability Coordinator for the state of Vermont, overseeing the certification process of domestic violence accountability programs, providing training and technical assistance to programs and working with the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and the Department of Corrections in Vermont to craft policies and procedures that create a holistic response to victim safety and offender accountability. Before coming to the Center, she was a Victim Witness Advocate at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, providing crisis intervention, case management, and court advocacy to domestic and sexual violence victims as well as other victims of violent crimes. While in Boston, she also worked at Safe Havens: The Interfaith Partnership Against Domestic Violence, creating curricula and coordinating a year-long training domestic and sexual violence education program for clergy and laity from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations throughout the greater Boston area. Rebecca lives in Vermont. She spends her free time running through the beautiful Green Mountains thinking about how to make the world a place where all people thrive.