Intimate Partner Violence Training and Readiness to Respond among Students, Staff, and Faculty in Three Institutions in the United States.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health concern; however, limited studies have explored perceptions and experiences towards IPV among students, staff, administrators, and faculty across diverse disciplines at institutions of higher education. The purposes of this study were to (1) assess experiences of IPV among a sample of students, staff/administrators, and faculty and (2) examine the relationship among attitudes, actual and perceived knowledge, awareness, training, readiness, and personal experiences with IPV in this sample. Participants were recruited from an urban university and two university-affiliated medical institutions to participate in an online survey. Bivariate and multivariate associations were assessed. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to examine direct and indirect effects of perceived and actual knowledge and personal experiences with IPV. Of the 216 respondents, 42.6% reported personally experiencing IPV and 34.3% reported having witnessed IPV. Over 34% of participants never received training on IPV. The sub-sample with training received between one and more than 15 hours of training. Standardized total effect of training on attitudes and awareness was ß = 0.42 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.30-0.51), the combined indirect effects was ß = 0.18 (95% CI = 0.10-0.27) and the direct effects of ß=0.23 (95% CI = 0.12-0.34), indicating that hours of training was highly associated with the participants' perceived knowledge and actual knowledge, which improved their attitudes and awareness towards IPV survivors. Our findings suggest the need for campus-wide formal training on IPV to better prepare members in higher education to accurately identify, assess, and intervene to protect victims of abuse. Interprofessional approaches are needed that focus on the multiple and intersecting needs of victims of violence and should also enhance professional self-efficacy and increase readiness to respond to IPV survivors.

Defining Justice: Restorative and Retributive Justice Goals Among Intimate Partner Violence Survivors.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are drivers of women's morbidity and mortality yet remain among the most underreported crimes in the United States. Understanding IPV/SV survivors' justice preferences and justice definitions can strengthen violence prevention and response systems. In-depth interviews were conducted with women who experienced past-year IPV (n = 26), to explore their justice preferences and recommendations. Primary themes included accountability, safety, and rehabilitation, with examples within and outside the current justice system, and across restorative and retributive justice frameworks. Women sought accountability through a variety of means. Retributive approaches like incarceration offered accountability as well as fleeting safety, but were critically limited in addressing the root causes of violence and, in some cases, were felt to exacerbate the problem. Women's expressed needs and preferences centered on restorative aspects of justice, including perpetrator's acknowledgment of harm, achieving physical safety and stability, and perpetrator rehabilitation through counseling. Paradoxically, women's safety-related justice goals both encouraged and discouraged their engagement in the formal justice system. The discordance between women's justice preferences and their perceptions and experiences within the current justice system illustrate complex and difficult trade-offs faced by survivors in achieving physical, social, and economic safety. Moreover, they likely contribute to the low levels of IPV/SV reporting to police. Women's goals were aligned with restorative justice principles, illustrating the value of this approach. In an era of unprecedented dialogue on justice reform, results provide direction for integrating restorative justice practices to strengthen the justice response to violence against women.

Gender, Protection Orders, and Intimate Partner Violence in Later Life: A Study of Protective Order Filings in Arizona.

Most analyses of domestic violence and older adults focus on abuse by children and non-intimate caregivers. However, a significant percentage of elder abuse is perpetrated by an intimate partner. This article addresses a gap in the current literature on elder abuse by addressing how older survivors of intimate partner violence use the legal system as a tool to achieve safety by filing for a civil protection order. We critically examine 607 Arizona protection order filings in 2015, comparing those petitions filed by adults 50 and older (n = 83) with those younger than 50 (n = 524). We find significant differences in the forms of violence described in the protection order petition, as well as the types of relationships between the petitioner and respondent, the likelihood that an order will be issued, and the provisions requested and granted. Most importantly, gender is a critical component of our analysis-older petitioners are far more likely to be men than younger petitioners, and both petitions and outcomes are very different for older men than for older women. These results are then discussed in the context of the dynamics of older relationships, current firearm laws, and the barriers older adults face when attempting to use resources intended to help survivors achieve safety.

Reimagining VAWA: Why Criminalization Is a Failed Policy and What a Non-Carceral VAWA Could Look Like.

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is the signature federal legislative accomplishment of the anti-violence movement and has ensured that criminalization is the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States. But at the time of its passage, some anti-violence activists, particularly women of color, warned that criminalization would be problematic for a number of reasons, a caution that has borne fruit in the 25 years since VAWA's passage. This article critiques the effectiveness of criminalization as anti-domestic violence policy and imagines what a non-carceral VAWA could look like.

"You Do Not Think of Me as a Human Being": Race and Gender Inequities Intersect to Discourage Police Reporting of Violence against Women.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are drivers of women's morbidity and mortality in urban environments yet remain among the most underreported crimes in the USA. We conducted 26 in-depth interviews with women who experienced past-year IPV or SV, to explore structural and community influences on police contact in Baltimore, MD. Results indicate that gender-based and race-based inequities intersected at the structural and community levels to discourage women from police contact following IPV/SV. Structural influences on police reporting included police discriminatory police misconduct, perceived lack of concern for citizens, power disparities, fear of harm from police, and IPV/SV-related minimization and victim-blaming. Community social norms of police avoidance discouraged police contact, enforced by stringent sanctions. The intersectional lens contextualizes a unique paradox for Black women: the fear of unjust harm to their partners through an overzealous and racially motivated police response and the simultaneous sense of futility in a justice system that may not sufficiently prioritize IPV/SV. This study draws attention to structural race and gender inequities in the urban public safety environment that shape IPV/SV outcomes. Race-based inequity undermines women's safety and access to justice and pits women's safety against community priorities of averting police contact and disproportionate incarceration. A social determinants framework is valuable for understanding access to justice for IPV/SV. Enhancing access to justice for IPV/SV requires overcoming deeply entrenched racial discrimination in the justice sector, and historical minimization of violence against women.

Understanding and Addressing Women's Use of Force in Intimate Relationships: A Retrospective.

This article surveys an evolving understanding of women's use of force in their intimate heterosexual relationships. It explores the common characteristics of women who use force and, using an intersectional lens, considers the experiences of women in marginalized communities. It also examines how the legal response to intimate partner violence has affected this population. In addition, the development of and best practices in community-based gender-responsive programming for women's use of force in their intimate heterosexual relationships are overviewed. In conclusion, this work identifies challenges that still exist in effectively responding to women's use of force.