Economic Distress, Community Context and Intimate Violence: An Application and Extension of Social Disorganization Theory. Executive Summary

摘要

Violence in intimate relationships poses a serious problem to the lives, the health, and the emotional well being of individuals and families. Although both men and women engage in physical violence against their intimate partners, women are significantly more likely to be seriously harmed than men (Brush, 1990; Sorenson, Upchurch, & Shen, 1996). For some women, home is not a haven of emotional security and physical safety but a place instead where they are physically abused by the men who supposedly love them. National surveys show rates of severe husband-to-wife violence to be approximately 35 per 1,000 couples (Straus & Gelles, 1986). Analyses of the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households found that 4.9 percent of men report inflicting physical violence on their spouses or cohabitors in the preceding year (Brush 1990). Women face a greater risk of assault and injury in their own homes by members of their own families than they do at the hands of strangers on the street.