Among the panel's other recommendations are better means of identifying and responding to victims who are at high risk of harm from abusive mates and more intensive monitoring of abusers who violate their probation; the latter is aimed at keeping offenders off the streets and preventing them from returning to injure or kill their victims. And because domestic abuse is often learned early in life, the panel wants schools to offer a teen dating violence prevention curriculum to help young people distinguish between healthy relationships and abusive ones.
There's no guarantee any of these measures will completely eliminate domestic violence-related homicides in Baltimore - and even the four deaths so far this year are too many. Officials must continue doing everything possible to reduce that number. Yet the drop in such crimes at least offers hope the city may be finally getting a handle on the problem of how to better guard against the kind of violent domestic disputes that all too often end in tragedy.
