Crime Comes Home

Crime in the streets is dropping, but in the home apparently it’s not. A new Justice Department study finds that in 1994, 243,000 Americans--four times more than previously estimated--suffered injuries inflicted by a spouse or other intimate partner. This revelation screams for remedies; victim support and public awareness campaigns would be a good start.

In 1994, California legislators, whose awareness of domestic violence had been heightened by the O.J. Simpson trial, tried to address the problem by requiring doctors to notify police whenever they know or suspect a patient has been battered. But the legislators failed to recognize that punishment of abusers must be accompanied by help for the abused.

Social workers say many battered women, fearful that their husbands might punish them if they visited a public hospital and were found to be battered, have avoided treatment or showed up at women’s shelters that have no medical facilities. The key, then, is to give victims of domestic violence the same counseling and legal services now afforded to rape victims.

Another under-recognized strategy for preventing domestic violence is public education. State legislators should expand California’s few existing programs, using as a model the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a San Francisco-based policy reform and education group that produces public service announcements showing how neighbors and other “bystanders” can help prevent domestic violence.

One ad, for example, shows a couple who hear telltale signs of domestic violence next door as they prepare to go to bed. They pick up the telephone to call the police but then lose their nerve, putting the phone down. The ad, which ought to get much wider circulation, explains why they made the wrong decision.

Vigorous public education campaigns have confronted issues like smoking and even the need for recycling. Given the dramatic new figures from the Justice Department, we should turn that same energy and commitment to domestic violence, a problem whose scope we are just beginning to understand.