Legal Services and Declines in Domestic Violence

Economists at Colgate University and the University of Arkansas have concluded that access to legal services is one of the primary factors contributing to a 21 percent decrease nationally in the reported incidence of domestic violence between 1993 and 1998. After the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the decrease in 2000, economists Amy Farmer and Jill Tiefenthaler set out to identify factors contributing to the decline. Farmer and Tiefenthaler examined the support services available to domestic violence survivors in the counties in which they reside. Surprisingly, they found that shelters, hotlines and counseling programs for battered women had no significant impact on the likelihood of domestic abuse, but that the availability of legal services decreases the likelihood that women will be battered. Farmer and Tiefenthaler note that while shelters, hotlines and counseling are vitally important crisis-intervention services, they do not offer women certain important alternatives to the abusive relationships, such as replacement of the partner's income. The economists theorize that by helping domestic violence survivors obtain protective orders, custody of their children, child support and sometimes public assistance, legal services programs help the women achieve physical safety and financial security and thus to leave their abusers. The economists note that between 1986 and 1994, the number of legal services programs serving victims of domestic violence increased by more than 254 percent, from 336 to 1,190. Farmer is careful not to downplay the importance of other support services, but says, "Legal services are the most expensive support service, the service to which the fewest women have access, and, according to our research, the only service that decreases the likelihood women will be battered. Since legal services help women achieve economic power and self-sufficiency, they are a good place to spend public money." Farmer and Tiefenthaler, whose study is forthcoming in Contemporary Economic Policy, also conclude that improvement in women's economic status, and demographic changes such as an aging population and an increasingly better-educated female population, also contributed to the decline in incidents of domestic violence. Amy Farmer & Jill Tiefenthaler, Explaining the Recent Decline in Domestic Violence (Dec. 2002) (on file with the Brennan Center for Justice); News Release issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (May 17, 2000) (on file with the Brennan Center for Justice); also based on original reporting by Brennan Center staff.

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