Power, Control, and Policy: A Comparison of State Policy Responses to Domestic Violence

Abstract

What policies are most effective at addressing and lowering cases of domestic violence? In the United States, there have been, and continue to be, a variety of responses and solutions brought forward by governments, communities, and individuals on how to prevent violence within families and what the consequences are when it occurs. Following federal policy guidelines, state and local governments have adopted different approaches to address domestic violence that focus on specific programs and systems that contribute to the reduction of domestic violence. This project is an in depth analysis of different policy approaches to identify the strategies that have empirically proven successful in lowering levels of domestic violence, as reported by CDC. I analyze two groups of states to determine if policies related to criminal justice or services for survivors have proven to be more successful at addressing domestic violence among women in the United States