Contributory Factors and the Situation of Children during Incidents of Domestic Violence: A Snapshot

Abstract

Research suggests that alcohol is an important contributory factor in incidents of domestic violence. Children living in households where incidents of domestic violence take place are at immediate risk of physical and psychological harm. This study aims to discover what factors most frequently contributed to incidents of domestic violence and what proportion of these incidents involved children in some way, and by doing so assesses the size and nature of the problems in this area. This report draws on information about victims and incidents from 2,596 police incident forms between April 1999 and March 2000. Alcohol was judged to have been the major contributory factor leading to incidents of domestic violence, it having been implicated in 30% of all incidents, while children were disproportionately more likely actually to have been ‘involved’ in an incident when alcohol or illicit drugs were judged to have been a contributory factor compared to others. The report discusses the implications of these findings.