Ohio has created new grant programmes for domestic-violence shelters and law-enforcement agencies to improve services and the response to domestic violence statewide, Governor Mike DeWine announced on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.

Source: Associated Press via Athens Messenger

The state will allocate $1 million (yaani 10 lakh dollars) in grant funds for Ohio's 55 recognised domestic-violence shelters. Each shelter is slated to receive a one-time $18,000 grant (yaani about 18 thousand dollars) for emergency shelter services and support for victims and their dependents, the governor's office said.

The move follows a state analysis of 2 million arrests, which found that over half of Ohio's violent-crime arrests from 1974 to 2023 involved domestic violence, according to the Ohio Department of Public Safety's Office of Criminal Justice Services. The data also show that percentage has not improved over time.

The state is also creating grants for ballistic shields for officers, training in lethality assessments, and expanded partnerships between law enforcement and victim services. Officers use lethality assessments to identify survivors at high risk of future violence and refer them to domestic-violence programmes for crisis intervention and safety planning, the governor's office explained.

Co-responder grants will support law-enforcement training and staffing for partnerships that bring victim advocates to domestic-violence calls, and the ballistic-shield programme is meant to protect officers responding to high-risk calls.

DeWine also directed the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board to develop a statewide standard for domestic-violence response and investigation.