Domestic violence curve also needs flattening
COVID-19 is testing families. The increased economic and social stressors brought on by the pandemic — confinement to the home, shifting parenting responsibilities, the anxieties of economic uncertainty — is pushing people to their limits where conflict in the home can escalate to violence.
As cities begin reopening phases, a critical window for domestic violence intervention and prevention opens. As experts predict a second wave of COVID-19, the window to intervene to prevent violence in the home may be narrow.
People are familiar with the concept of flattening the COVID-19 curve. Yet, we are also dealing with epidemic levels of violence in the home — a curve that also requires individual and governmental actions to flatten.
What would it take to harness the same level of energy and effort across our societies to acknowledge the scope and scale of violence within the home and commit to truly “flattening the curve?”
While the health impacts of COVID-19 will eventually decline as a vaccine is developed and measures of prevention put in place, violence in the home is on no such trajectory. Rather, the long term economic and emotional hardship is likely to increase already unacceptable levels of violence within the home.
Violence in the home has both immediate outcomes (e.g. injury and death) as well as long-term and long-lasting effects on individuals and society. Children who experience or witness violence at home are at higher risk of substance use disorder, mental illness, delinquency (59 per cent increase), adult criminal behaviour (28 per cent increase), and struggle to deal with conflict thus more prone to resort to use of violence and violent crime later in life (30 per cent increase).
The data shows that violence begets violence — its proliferation and effects spread like a virus itself.
Four months into the pandemic and the differing emergency responses, we are already seeing an increase of violence in homes across the globe. Domestic violence hotline phones are ringing around the clock. Around the world, we’re seeing 25-33 per cent increases in violence against women.
Public education for flattening the COVID-19 curve has been strong. The same public education for domestic violence is needed.
As cities begin to reopen, there is a moment of opportunity to provide information, access, and protection to those at risk, all of which have been strained due to resource and movement restrictions during the lockdowns.
Individuals can learn healthy relationships skills, participate in mentorship programs — including online programs, seek mediation for conflict resolution, etc. Cities can go further to activate limitations on weapons access for those with track records of violence, make it easier to obtain restraining orders, lower barriers for services, launch campaigns to educate the public regarding violence in the home and better train police to respond to domestic violence incidents.
Preventing violence in the home also requires upstream prevention, such as addressing inequalities and racism.
To support local communities in Canada, a national group led by the Canadian Municipal Network on Crime Prevention is currently working to identify the best prevention tools and how to bring those evidence-based programs closer to people now and after the pandemic.
Globally, the Peace in Our Cities network is working to galvanize a movement of people, mayors, and city governments to halve and transform urban violence by 2030. Cities are pioneers of innovation and adaptation. The growing network of 16 cities and 23 peace-building and civil society partners recognizes that, like the pandemic, violence imposes unequal burdens on women, children, and those marginalized from society whether due to race, class, religion or otherwise.
People and society will feel the knockon effects of COVID-19 for years to come. Right now, we are dealing with two related pandemics and two curves, the COVID-19 curve and the violence curve. Flattening both will be crucial.
Felix Munger is the managing director at Canadian Municipal Network on Crime Prevention.
Rachel Locke is the Director of Impact:Peace at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. Zander Willoughby is the program manager at +Peace.