Reducing intimate partner homicides: The effects of federally-funded shelter service availability in California

Over twenty-five years of policy and scholarly attention to the problem of intimate partner violence appears to have generated greater victim safety. Intimate partner homicides, the most serious form of violence between intimates, have been declining for nearly three decades in many contexts, but not all. This study built on a small number of studies that had advanced knowledge about the policy-relevant factors behind the intimate partner homicide decline. The analysis described here utilized a set of county-level data from California from 1987 to 2000 to estimate the effects of shelter-based service availability on race/ethnicity-specific female intimate partner homicide victimization. The study relied on a new measure of service availability in an attempt to overcome limitations with previously used indicators. This analysis did not reveal an effect of shelter-based service availability and criminal justice system responses on changes in female intimate partner homicide victimizations. Reasons for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.