Outlawing Domestic Violence: What's Working and What Isn't our years after the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and well over two decades after the founding of the nation's first battered women's shelters, domestic violence continues to plague women and children in the United States. The VAWA hearings provided a national wake-up call about a shockingly high rate of battering in our society and a sadly inadequate response. Congress documented that our police departments, prosecutors and courts, deeply infected with gender bias, often failed to respond to domestic violence as a crime or blamed the victim for the violence. The VAWA began a major Federal commitment to improving the criminal justice system and services for battered women by providing Federal dollars and encouraging local partnerships among criminal justice systems and victim advocacy organizations. At this juncture, we can report important progress, but tragic deficiencies remain. Communities around the country are experimenting with promising approaches and partnerships. More Americans than ever recognize that domestic violence is a serious and important problem in our society. Local, State, and Federal policymakers place the issue high on their agenda. However, despite this progress, shelters continue to turn away women that they cannot serve, and women are still murdered by intimate partners at a dramatically high rate, Cutbacks in government support for low-income families are causing serious problems for battered women and their children. Gender bias is still a serious problem in too many State and local criminal and civil justice systems. Thus, a review of the latest developments on domestic violence finds both reasons for hope and causes for concern. The Nature and Character of Violence Against Women Any assessment of our response to domestic violence should begin with looking at how prevalent domestic violence remains. Women disproportionately experience intimate partner violence - including physical and sexual abuse committed by current and former spouses, boyfriends, and girlfriends. From spousal battering to acquaintance rape, violence against women and girls largely happens at the hands of someone they know, and usually someone with whom they have a relationship. For example, approximately 37 percent of women seeking injury related treatment in hospital emergency rooms are there because of injuries inflicted by a current or former spouse or intimate partner (Rand, 1997). The most recent data from the Department of justice, which provides a conservative estimate of violent crimes against women, shows how different intimate partner violence is for men and women. (The following are taken from Greenfeld, 1998, unless noted otherwise). Between 1992 and 1996, women and girls experienced on average close to one million incidents of assault, rape, and murder by a current or former intimate partner annually. (Other estimates such as the 1985 National Family Violence Survey found the annual rate to be much higher). During this same period, men experienced only about 150,000 violent crimes by an intimate partner. The homicide rate for intimate partner violence has declined dramatically since 1976, but the vast majority of that decline can be attributed to a steep drop in the number of men killed by current or former spouses or intimate partners. Thirty percent of female homicide victims are killed by intimates - a rate that has held steady for the past twenty years. Teenage girls (age 16-19) experience one of the highest rates of violence by an intimate partner when compared to other age groups. Strangers commit only about one in five incidents of sexual assault against women; friends and acquaintances commit over half of these assaults and intimate partners about one fourth (Bachman and Saltzman, 1995). In short, the most common perpetrator of physical or sexual violence against a woman is a man known to the woman, often her intimate partner. This pattern has been shown in studies of African-American, Mexican-American, and white men, and of urban and rural women (Crowell and Burgess, 1996). Further research is needed on intimate partner violence against women of color, lesbians, immigrant women, older women, teenage girls, and women with disabilities. Policy Responses to Domestic Violence Because violence against women in the home has been discounted throughout history as a private, "family" matter rather than a crime, reforming the criminal justice system has been a high priority for policy responses to domestic violence. In the past a police officer's discretion not to arrest an abuser or a prosecutor's discretion not to prosecute a case was used to duck responsibility for dealing with domestic violence. Today, experiments with "mandatory arrest" or "pro-arrest" and "no-drop prosecution" policies are taking place in many parts of the country. The results of these new approaches are still being evaluated. Important benefits include eliminating discretion that has been used harmfully in the past and sending a clear statement from Federal, State, and local governments that beating an intimate partner in the home is a crime equivalent to beating a stranger on the street. Some advocates have raised concerns that these mandatory policies harm battered women by removing their choices or placing them in danger Women may choose to drop charges or refuse to testify for a variety of reasons, including fear of retribution, concern that if their abuser is jailed there will be no income to support her and her children, or conflicted feelings about turning someone over to a racist or otherwise unfair justice system. A mandatory arrest and prosecution policy may also be manipulated by an abusive partner who calls the police first or brings counter-charges against a partner who has merely tried to defend herself or her children. However, there is strong agreement that training and education about domestic violence for police, prosecutors, and judges is critical to improved handling of domestic violence cases. Current Federal funding requirements promote increased coordination between advocates in the community and their local criminal justice systems. Unfortunately, this requires overcoming decades of mistrust on one side and inadequacy on the other. In some places, these partnerships are working relatively well, and in other places they remain illusory. As battered women have traditionally been unable to look to the State for protection, a private community based network of shelters, safe homes and other services has evolved from the first few shelters established in the early 1970's to over 2,000 programs across the nation. The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides free nationwide crisis assistance, and since its establishment the Hotline has referred thousands of women to shelters and services. Unfortunately, too many counties lack services for battered women; the need for emergency shelter is still greater than the number of beds. Crucial gaps in services include appropriate responses to violence against women in different racial, ethnic and cultural communities, improving legal protections and domestic violence services for lesbians, structural and attitudinal access to services for women with disabilities, removing language barriers, and protecting women in rural areas. Dramatic increases in funding for local shelters and programs have made a real difference in services for battered women and their children, but there is still a clear unmet need. In addition to improved crisis assistance other high priorities include developing and implementing prevention strategies directed at children and youth and improving longer-term transitional support - such as improved access to affordable housing and steady employment in order to reduce a battered woman's potential dependence on her abuser. Now that more attention has been focused on treating violence in the home as a crime, advocates are looking at the impact that violence has outside the home, including the impact of domestic violence on the work, place, education, the health care system, and other sectors of society. Although progress has been made in the criminal justice system our civil justice system is lagging behind. Women involved in divorce and custody disputes often find judges and child protection agencies which are insensitive to domestic violence and which penalize women who report abuse. Recent policy initiatives in many of these areas focus on continued Federal leadership and increased State and local reform. The Violence Against Women Act of 1998 (VAWA2), H.R.3514/S.21 10, reauthorizes essential VAWA programs - including funding for shelters and services and support for local criminal justice agencies - but also looks at the effect of domestic violence on children and the need to address violence in the workplace and in schools. VAWA2, currently pending in Congress, also includes provisions aimed at helping older women and women with disabilities, and it provides increased support for sexual assault programs and domestic violence research. Welfare "Reform" Domestic violence is intricately linked to the issue of women's poverty. Abusers may forbid their partners from working or going to school, or sabotage their efforts to become financially independent. Research with women in welfare-to-work programs documents a high rate of domestic violence as well as common techniques of barterers. These techniques range from stealing clothes, to constant telephone harassment at work, to keeping a woman up the night before a key exam, to inflicting visible injuries that might prevent her from going out (Raphael, 1996). Because abusers may control the family finances, a woman may be forced to flee with not much more than the clothes on her back. Women escaping domestic violence have looked to welfare and other benefits programs - including food stamps and housing - as their literal "safety net." In 1996 Congress reformed Federal welfare laws, limiting the amount of time a woman can receive welfare benefits, and requiring that individuals work while receiving benefits. Some States now require that a person be a State resident for a certain period of time before receiving welfare benefits. These changes affect battered women and their families dramatically. New work requirements and time limits mean that women using welfare to escape domestic violence will face higher hurdles. Further, if their current or former partners try to prevent them from working or keeping a job, these women are now more likely to be sanctioned and lose their benefits. New rules imposing residency requirements may unfairly penalize women and families who move across State lines to flee abusive partners. To address these problems, the 1996 Welfare Reform Act included the Family Violence Option (FVO). The FVO allows States to waive, on a case-by-case basis, requirements that might make it more difficult for a person to escape domestic violence, or that under the circumstances constitute an unfair penalty. The FVO also has provisions for screening and providing welfare applicants referral to domestic services. As of May of 1998, about half of the States had adopted some form of the FVO. It remains to be seen whether States appropriately implement this provision. Welfare caseworkers will need domestic violence training. Procedures for safe and confidential assessments are still being developed. However, the FVO provides an important opportunity for domestic violence advocates to get involved in their State and local welfare agencies, and make those agencies more responsive to the needs of battered women Viewing Domestic Violence As a Civil Rights Violation One of the most exciting public policy approaches to domestic violence is the evolving use of civil rights laws and remedies. Viewing domestic violence, sexual assault and other forms of violence against women as potential gender-motivated acts of violence allows the use of civil rights remedies against the perpetrator. In the VAWA, Congress created a civil rights remedy for domestic violence, allowing a person to sue her rapist or barterer for violating her right to be free of gender-motivated violence (42 U.S.C. 13981). A growing number of States include gender in their State hate crimes laws (Anti-Defamation League, 1998), and pending Federal legislation would add gender to 18 U.S.C. 245, the Federal bias crime statute (H.R. 3081/S. 1529). Discrimination against women is an important factor in the perpetuation of domestic violence. Batterers may view women as inferior and as deserving to be beaten. It is important to respond to this discrimination by recognizing domestic violence as a violation of a woman's civil rights. In addition, focusing on the potential motivation of the perpetrator (showing a discriminatory motivation is a requirement of civil rights statutes) makes it harder to blame the woman for provoking or for failing to escape the abuse she experiences. Recent cases in Massachusetts and Maine against "serial batterers" demonstrate the possibilities of this approach. State civil rights laws were used against individuals who victimized multiple women, in cases involving genderbased epithets, serious forms of physical and sexual violence, and a clear pattern of abusing women. These types of cases allow Statewide remedies, including injunctions that protect a whole class of women from the perpetrator They also highlight the gender-motivated nature of the crime, and make clear that the State will not tolerate discriminatory acts of violence against women. Conclusion Political leaders at all levels increasingly consider domestic violence a top policy priority. This provides an important opportunity to press for even more improvements in our society's response to battering. Because women and children continue to suffer injury and death every day, we must continue our struggle for an end to domestic violence Pamela Coukos, who has long been involved in litigation, legislative drafting and public education concerning violence against women and women's civil rights, was Public Policy Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

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