The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that domestic violence (DV) costs in the United States exceed $3.6 trillion a year when factoring in such things as medical costs, lost wages, and loss of productivity. And DV-related homicides account for more than half of all femicides in the United States. While DV is certainly not a new problem, COVID-19 has compounded the dangers for those already living with abusive partners or family members. Many jurisdictions reported substantial increases in requests for protective orders and calls to crisis lines.
Although people from all ethnicities, genders, socio-economic groups, and sexual orientations might experience domestic or family violence, it seems clear that many people who already are marginalized by one or more of their identities experience violence at increased and disproportionate rates. According to the most recent data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, for example, DV among people who identify as bisexual was eight times higher than straight-identifying people and DV among gay/lesbian-identifying people was twice the rate of straight-identifying people. The rates of DV for trans-identifying people, Black and indigenous females, and people with disabilities is also significantly higher than the rates for the baselines against which they are compared: straight, White and Asian, and non-disabled people, respectively.
Domestic disputes are considered to be the deadliest type of calls to which police officers in the United States respond. Recent studies of law enforcement fatalities by type rank domestic disputes at the top of the list. And such cases are exceedingly difficult to prosecute for myriad reasons, including the large number of victims/survivors who recant their stories or refuse to press charges, even when there is ample evidence of substantial abuse.
What can be done to address this public health and criminal justice problem? Research suggests that working with a survivor advocate can mitigate some of the impacts of violence, especially in terms of safety planning, which has been shown to decrease future incidents of violence, from the survivor perspective. DV interventions that target victims/survivors, especially in terms of safety, can thus be very impactful for victims/survivors of domestic violence.
However, there is very little evidence that interventions with perpetrators of violence have much of an impact on their thinking or behaviors. Educational tools like the power and control wheel, which visually represents the cycle of violence in many abusive relationships, can be an effective tool for working with survivors, but its usefulness in changing perpetrator behavior is minimal at best. Other tools or training aimed at perpetrators similarly lack research-based effectiveness. Despite often being court-mandated for convicted DV offenders, programs like BIPP (Battering Intervention and Prevention Programming) have not been particularly effective in changing perpetrator attitudes or behaviors. Some suggest this is because the attitudes and behaviors of abusive individuals may not be “fixable,” especially after they have perpetrated violence. Psychologists like Dr. Ramamani Durvasula argue that the overwhelming majority of abusers fit the pattern of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD. However, many of the characteristics of NPD are prized and rewarded in society, or at least tolerated, especially in men, which calls into question whether NPD should actually count as a “disorder” and be listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) as such. Further, research on NPD doesn’t offer much evidence that NPD is “fixable” via psychotherapy or drug regimens, although some of the co-occurring mental health challenges that sometimes accompany NPD, like depression, can be so addressed. But perhaps we shouldn’t try to fix NPD at all, if this constellation of personality characteristics can be more positive than negative. Many famous and successful people who have changed the world arguably have characteristics of NPD and have been abusive towards others.
From the 2023 National Ethics Bowl