by Rana Sampson
Translation(s): Violência Doméstica (Portuguese) PDF
This guide begins by describing the problem of domestic violence and reviewing factors that increase its risks.† It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local domestic violence problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem and what is known about these from evaluative research and police practice.
Domestic disputes are some of the most common calls for police service. Many domestic disputes do not involve violence; this guide discusses those that do, as well as the measures that can be used to reduce them. In the United States, domestic violence accounts for about 20 percent of the nonfatal violent crime women experience and three percent of the nonfatal violent crime men experience.Harm levels vary from simple assault to homicide, with secondary harms to child witnesses. Domestic violence calls can be quite challenging for police as they are likely to observe repetitive abuse against the same victims, who may not be able to or may not want to part from their abusers. Police typically view these calls as dangerous, partly because old research exaggerated the risks to police.††
Domestic violence is but one aspect of the larger set of problems related to family violence. Related problems not directly addressed in this guide, each of which requires separate analysis, include:
† Much of the recent research about domestic violence refers to the problem as “intimate partner violence.” Mostly this guide keeps to the term domestic violence, not because it is more accurate, but simply because it is still so widely used by police. Also in this guide, the term domestic violence is intended to include violence perpetrated by current and former intimates or dating partners, including those of the opposite or same sex.
†† Originally researchers failed to separate domestic disputes from other types of “disturbance” calls and raw percentages stretched the findings beyond what they reasonably meant (Fridell and Pate, 1997). Of the 713 officers feloniously slain in the United States between 1983 and 1992, 33 percent (235 officers) were slain while intervening in a crime. Of those, 24 percent (56 officers) were slain during a domestic disturbance. In other words, about five officers a year in the United States over that 10-year period were killed during domestic disturbance calls. The frequency of the call likely makes claims of dangerousness in terms of injury to officers overblown as well.
In addition, police must address a range of disputes among intimates, former intimates, and family members that may or may not involve violence, including
Some of these related problems are covered in other guides in this series, all of which are listed at the end of this guide. For the most up-to-date list of current and future guides, visit www.popcenter.org.
Domestic violence involves a current or former intimate (and in many states, a current or former dating partner). Domestic violence tends to be underreported: women report only one-quarter to one-half of their assaults to police, men perhaps less.The vast majority of physical assaults are not life threatening; rather, they involve pushing, slapping, and hitting.Most women victims of domestic violence do not seek medical treatment, even for injuries deserving of it.
Surveys provide us with estimates of the level of domestic violence in the United States, but there are wide differences among them depending on the definitions of domestic violence used and populations surveyed.Two large surveys provide some insight into the level of domestic violence in the United States. The first, the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS),† conducted in 1995 and1996, found that nearly one in four women and nearly one in 13 men surveyed experienced rape and/or physical assault by a current or former spouse/partner/dating partner at some time in their lifetime, with about one and one-half percent of women and about one percent of men having been so victimized in the 12 months before the survey.The National