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NIJ Journal No. 252 • July 2005
The Decline of Intimate Partner Homicide
Final report submitted to NIJ, Analysis of Unexamined
Issues in the Intimate Partner Homicide Decline: Race,
Quality of Victim Services, Offender Accountability, and
System Accountability, William Wells and William DeLeon-Granados,
grant number 00–WT–VX–0012, available from
NCJRS (NCJ 196666).
Intimate partner homicide rates have been declining since
1976, and researchers have been studying the phenomenon
since then to determine what factors are responsible. Two
researchers, William Wells at Southern Illinois University–Carbondale
and William DeLeon-Granados, then a professor at Indiana
University–Bloomington and now a principal with The
Criminology and Public Policy Consultancy in San Rafael,
California, conducted a study looking at several topics
they felt had not been sufficiently examined. (See “The
Study” for more information about the methodology.)
The report discusses numerous issues playing roles in
the decline, including the effects of shelters, gender
differences, and racial differences. This is the first
study to offer substantive analysis of Hispanic victims
in both urban and rural settings.
The key findings were:
Shelters
- In urban counties, federally funded domestic violence
shelter-based organizations were associated with declines
in Hispanic female victimization but not in African American
or white female victimization. The researchers hypothesize
that shelters do not affect rates for white urban females
because these women tend to have other resources for help
(such as attorneys, legal services, friends, and counselors)
and tend not to use shelters, therefore deriving no protective
benefit from them. African American women, the researchers
suggest, use shelters but may find the protection afforded
by them insufficient, since they are often higher risk
victims.
- In urban counties, although shelters were not associated
with a decline in African American female victimization,
the presence of shelters for women did contribute to a
decrease in African American male victimization. This
finding, according to the researchers, supports the belief
that different motivations drive female-perpetrated and
male-perpetrated intimate partner homicide and indicates
that female perpetrators tend to resort to homicide as
a last resort when they feel they have no other escape
from an abusive relationship.
Criminal Justice Interventions
- There was no statistically significant relationship
between any criminal justice system response and victimization
for either gender or for any racial or ethnic group, a
finding that greatly surprised the researchers.
- Where law enforcement intervention increased in domestic
abuse situations, women experienced dramatically larger
percentage increases in arrest, prosecution, and conviction
than men. For example, over the study, arrests for domestic
violence of male suspects increased a total of 37 percent
while arrests of females increased 446 percent. Convictions
for an offense following a domestic violence-related arrest
grew by 131 percent for males, but by 1,207 percent for
females between 1987 and 1999.
The researchers conclude that more work is needed to
explore the complex relationships among gender, ethnicity,
and intimate partner homicide. More analysis of shelter-based
services is also warranted, the researchers assert, and
they suggest that policymakers facing limited resources
may want to direct them toward shelter-based organizations
rather than focusing solely on criminal justice system
responses.
THE STUDY
The study covered a 13-year period, from 1987 to 2000,
and included 58 California counties. The researchers
chose California for three reasons: it allowed them
to have standardized data for a diverse population,
including data from both urban and rural areas; it provided
numerous examples of shelter and criminal justice responses;
and it experienced a much larger decline in female victimization
rates than the average State.
In an effort to better understand any intimate partner
homicide rate variations based on ethnicity, gender,
place, race, and time, the researchers looked at these
characteristics in arrest, conviction, and incarceration
records for each county’s domestic violence offenses.
Victim services were gauged by the rate of federally
funded shelters found in each county per 100,000 women,
by race.
The homicide data were given to the researchers by
the State of California Department of Justice, Criminal
Justice Statistics Center, which included information
such as the relationship between victim and offender,
county where the homicide took place, weapon used, and
victims’ and offenders’ age, race, and gender.
In addition, California provided data on the criminal
justice system’s response and on the available
shelter services.
NCJ 208710
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