Volusia County approves Florida’s first domestic violence offender database
VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. —
Volusia County has approved a public domestic violence database that will allow people to access information about convicted abusers online, aiming to increase awareness and prevention.
The database will list individuals convicted of one or more domestic violence offenses and will retroactively include convictions from up to 10 years ago. It won’t contain any information about victims.
The initiative was modeled after a similar database in Tennessee, the nation’s first public domestic violence registry.
The Volusia County Council approved the measure in a 6-1 vote. Council Member Matt Reinhart sponsored the proposal. He is also a board member of the Domestic Abuse Council of Volusia County.
Emma Sanders, the domestic abuse council’s Director of Community Impact, says the registry is a way for people in the community to be aware of who they are dating, hiring, or hanging out with.
“We’re providing information that’s already available for the public to see, but we’re streamlining it to make it an easy process to access that information,” she said.
Council Member Don Dempsey, the only member to vote against the proposal, raised concerns about miscategorizing individuals due to technicalities. “You have to understand how many innocent people were caught in the net,” Dempsey said when explaining cases he saw during his time as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney. “I mean literally I could throw this [pen] at you, that’s a battery,” he said.
Survivors of domestic violence at the meeting supported the registry, emphasizing its potential to prevent future abuse. “I wasn’t my abuser’s first nor will I be his last, but moving forward, a tool like this could easily save my life.”
The same woman added, “At the same time, it’s important to understand the registry will not be a record of all abusive behavior.”
Sanders, with the county’s domestic abuse council, acknowledged that the registry is just one step in addressing domestic violence.
“There’s other tools that we’re going to have to come up with in the future that are going to try to encapsulate everybody as a whole… We hope to be a change agent, not only for Volusia County, but for the entire state of Florida,” she said.
Once launched, the database will be accessible through the county’s website.