For weeks, amid the allegations involving several NFL players, domestic violence has been the focus of intense national attention. Does the turmoil reflect a worsening epidemic of domestic violence, or has the U.S. in fact made great strides to curtail it? The answer is complicated.
On one hand, domestic violence committed by intimate partners β current or former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends β has declined by more than 60 percent since the mid-1990s, according to Justice Department figures.
Yet that dramatic decrease has largely stalled, with the numbers stabilizing at a level that appalls people in the prevention field. The latest federal figures for “serious” intimate partner violence β sexual assault or aggravated physical assault β showed 360,820 such incidents in 2013, or roughly 1,000 per day.
