RADAR ALERT: Where's Your Money Being Spent?

In this tough economic recession, states have to decide how to balance budgets and where to cut costs. Facing California's largest budget deficit ever, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to cut unnecessary state expenses, or at least expenses that haven't proved the money was making a difference.

A report issued by RADAR Services, "Are Abuse Shelters Helping the True Victims of Domestic Violence?"¹, reveals some disturbing facts about the country's 1,600 abuse shelters. Based on research studies, reviews of shelter websites, and interviews with former shelter residents and staff, the report reveals that only one in 10 persons are in domestic violence shelters because of they are victims of battering.

Gov. Schwarzenegger apparently felt politically safe cutting all state funding to domestic violence programs in the state of California. The federal government openly admits that the shelters it funds give no data at all on what they do, how they do it, who they provide services to, what those services are, who they reject, etc. They also have established no criteria by which to judge whether they actually reduced domestic violence or not.^2,3