Intimate-Partner Murders

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/opinion/domestic-homicide-rates.html

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To the Editor:

Re “One Outlier as Homicides in City Decline Significantly” (news article, Nov. 30), about the failure to reduce domestic homicide rates over time: This is not a new phenomenon.

In the 1990s the New York City Health Department began tracking homicides of women using medical examiner records. Analyses revealed that as homicides of men and nonintimate-partner homicides of women dropped dramatically, intimate partner or “domestic” homicides of women by their intimate partners remained stubbornly in place.

The City Council convened hearings in 2000 to learn about these data, and reports were also published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Our analyses questioned whether traditional theories of crime, and the policies and practices they inform, were adequate to reduce the prevalence of intimate-partner homicides of women, given the critical role of the day-to-day social interactions — the ones that establish and maintain social norms — in the acceptance of violence against women.

Then, as now, addressing how social norms and informal social control — the “little things” people say and do to prevent and control partner violence — may be critical to effective violence-reduction programming. Unfortunately, few resources are directed to such approaches, with most support going to formal systems, like the criminal legal system.

VICTORIA FRYE

New York

The writer is an associate medical professor at the CUNY School of Medicine.