Domestic Violence Increased in 7 Countries During Lockdowns
By Chelsea Cirruzzo
Feb. 25, 2021, at 4:09 p.m.
Isolation, and the economic and health stress created by the pandemic may be leading contributors, researchers say.
Domestic violence in the United States spiked by 8.1% following the imposition of stay-at-home orders during the pandemic, according to a review of studies on violence by the Council on Criminal Justice. The review also looked at international studies in six other countries and found that on average domestic violence increased 7.8% across those 7 countries.
"I'm just thinking of the toll that it's taken on victims of domestic violence, and then the children in the house who experience and witness that violence," says researcher Alex Piquero, a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Miami and a criminologist who co-authored the study.
The paper reviewed multiple U.S. and international studies that compared changes in domestic violence incidents before and after jurisdictions began imposing pandemic-related lockdowns in early 2020. Piquero says the paper isn't meant to bash lockdown orders, which he calls necessary, but to shed light on the adverse impacts they had, including on domestic violence.
Researchers drew in a wide range of data from logs of police calls, to crime reports, to health records. Eighteen studies were included in the system review; 12 of which were from the U.S. and six more from: Australia, Argentina, Mexico, India, Italy and Sweden.
Piquero says the U.S. was most represented in the review because the U.S. had the most robust data on crime and domestic violence. But there were also some challenges in the U.S. data, he adds, because even between U.S. jurisdictions, domestic violence may be coded differently by law enforcement.
"There's not going to be a uniform definition of domestic violence in all of these studies," he says.
(Alvaro Calvo/Getty Images)
Overall, the study provided 37 estimates of domestic violence changes before and after lockdowns were implemented in the countries studied. Eight of those estimates reported a decrease in domestic violence whereas 29 reported an increase.
The results of the study confirms concerns raised by public health leaders, women's groups, and survivor advocates, researchers say: that domestic violence is on the rise during the pandemic, although it's still unclear what is driving the rise in violence. But Piquero has some ideas.
"What happened in the United States is people were taken away from everything they're used to, and everybody was forced to stay home, literally, all the time," he says. "Then you have the stress and anxiety of COVID, and the cases, and the hospitalizations and the doom and gloom." Add in employment losses and kids stuck at home, Piquero says, the environment becomes "this cocktail that's just ready to explode."
Additionally, he says that victims of domestic violence likely experienced isolation from friends and neighbors who could be the ones to spot and report abuse. This extends to children, too, Piquero says. Teachers are some of the most likely people to spot abuse, but with kids out of school, it means no one is checking up on them, he says.
The study is the latest examination of how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected domestic violence around the world, including in countries such as Morocco and across regions such as Latin America. Last November the United Nations released a report that revealed disturbing findings around the world on the acceptance of domestic violence.
Piquero says countries need to be ensuring their domestic violence shelters remain adequately staffed and resourced through the pandemic, particularly as the spread of new COVID-19 variants prompt further lockdowns. Piquero also recommends police do more welfare checks on homes where domestic violence calls have previously come from.
The study does have some nuances. The rise in reported violence might also reflect an increase in victims who decide to seek criminal justice interventions, the researchers say, and reporting challenges or underreporting is still possible. Additionally, the review relies mainly on U.S. studies because the data fit the criteria they were searching for.
Future research is needed on how kids are dealing with the increase in violence, Piquero says, as well as what the long-term impacts of the increase are on women and children.
"There's no doubt in my mind that we now might have kids who are scarred by witnessing domestic violence in the home, and what does that do to them going forward?" he asks.