Weekend Reads | Understanding Domestic Violence Deaths in Our State

by Kevin Schofield

(Content warning: violent deaths and suicide)

This weekend’s read is a report looking at deaths related to domestic violence (DV) in Washington State, the result of a study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Washington. It caught my eye specifically because we don’t often see a study like this focused on just a single state, and in this case, it’s our own. The researchers approached this looking for opportunities to prevent DV-related violence through early interventions, hoping statistics would suggest who would be the priority for such interventions.

It turns out that there is a federal database for collecting information on violent deaths: the National Violent Death Reporting System, hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with data supplied by state governments. The researchers dug into that data to look for patterns that would suggest how to guide early interventions.

Between 2015 and 2020, 12.9% of violent deaths (948 out of 7,352) in Washington State were connected to domestic violence. About one-third of the victims were female, and two-thirds were male. The racial demographics of the victims match closely to the overall demographics of the state, with Black and white victims slightly overrepresented and Asian and Hispanic victims slightly underrepresented. Of the DV-related deaths, 38% were homicides and 62% were suicides, which is not quite as skewed as the statistics for all violent deaths in Washington (84% suicide), yet it’s a fact we often miss: There are far more DV-related suicides than homicides. Every single homicide and suicide is a tragedy with a victim, and we should try to prevent them all. But if we want to prevent them, we need to understand them.

Diving further into the statistics, we find some meaningful outliers in the DV-related deaths. For instance, a majority of DV-related homicides have a female victim, whereas the vast majority of suicides, DV-related suicides, and homicides as a whole have a male victim. DV-related homicide uniquely targets women (nearly 57%), and DV-related suicide disproportionately has male victims (almost 80%). On a similar note, DV-related homicide doesn’t seem to correlate to education level, but DV-related suicide does: It skews heavily toward those with more education.

There are differences in the weapons and means of death as well. Slightly over half of DV-related homicides involve a firearm, which is fewer than the rate for all homicides, whereas over 60% of DV-related suicides involve a firearm, more than for all suicides. About one-fifth of DV-related homicides involve a sharp instrument; about one-fifth of DV-related suicides involve strangulation or hanging. The researchers note in their report that while federal law prohibits those convicted of felonies or DV misdemeanors and those subject to DV protection orders from purchasing or possessing firearms, that law is frequently not enforced — though here in Washington, those subject to an extreme risk protection order can and often do have their firearms confiscated, and in King County, there is a specific law enforcement unit tasked to remove dangerous weapons from individuals prohibited from possessing them.

The researchers then turn their attention to their main question: Do the statistics suggest when there might be opportunities for early interventions to prevent DV-related violence, and who should be flagged for such interventions? They point to statistics showing that in about 48% of the DV-related homicide cases and 42% of DV-related suicides, someone involved had prior interactions with either the criminal justice system or civil or legal services agencies, suggesting that those agencies may have meaningful opportunities to identify early interventions. The practical problem with that argument, however, is that it’s backward-looking: while a large fraction of the instigators or victims of DV-related violence may have interacted with those agencies, they may represent only a tiny fraction of the people those agencies interact with every day. That might make it impossible to identify the small subset who are likely to go on to commit acts of violence or fall victim to DV-related violence — or it might create so many referrals as to overwhelm the agencies tasked with early interventions.

The researchers also note that there is no codified definition of “domestic violence,” which makes it more difficult to pass information and referrals between agencies and increases the likelihood that the ball might get dropped in attempts at interventions to prevent DV-related violence.

Still, the report raises an important point: There are visible patterns to DV-related deaths in our state, and we should be looking to identify opportunities for early intervention that would save lives. The data is messy, and there is clearly more work to do to identify who should be the priority for interventions, but this is a place where more can and should be done.

Deaths Related to Domestic Violence in Washington State

Kevin Schofield is a freelance writer and publishes Seattle Paper Trail. Previously he worked for Microsoft, published Seattle City Council Insight, co-hosted the “Seattle News, Views and Brews” podcast, and raised two daughters as a single dad. He serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Park Zoo, where he also volunteers.