An estimated 35 percent of women in the US will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes.
In addition, up to 70 percent of female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner.
To protect women who repeatedly suffer from severe abuse, police from seven jurisdictions in Oklahoma teamed up with social services to use a “lethality assessment program” to identify women whose lives may be in immediate danger and provide them with support to reduce the likelihood and severity of abuse.
A recent study of the lethality assessment program, funded by NIJ, has shown it is effective in:
- Helping women at high risk for severe and near lethal violence to talk with a domestic violence advocate at the scene of a police-involved domestic violence incident.
- Increasing survivors’ use of formal and informal protective strategies.
- Decreasing the frequency and severity of physical violence.
Read “Police Departments’ Use of the Lethality Assessment Program: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation.”