FACT SHEET ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE &
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF SURVIVAL
(Download this fact sheet as a pdf.)
Domestic violence can have deadly consequences for victims, often forcing them to defend their lives. This is especially true for black women.
Violence perpetrated against women and girls can put them at risk for incarceration because their survival strategies are routinely criminalized. From being coerced into criminal activity by their abusers to fighting back to defend their lives or their children’s lives, survivors of domestic violence can find themselves trapped between the danger of sometimes life-threatening violence and the risk of spending the rest of their lives in prison.
Black women and other marginalized people are especially likely to be criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated while trying to navigate and survive the conditions of violence in their lives.
Pregnant women or women who recently gave birth face a higher risk of escalating domestic violence.
Mothers represent the majority of people in women’s prisons, creating a devastating impact on families, children, pregnancy, and childbirth.
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF SURVIVAL
(Download this fact sheet as a pdf.)
Domestic violence can have deadly consequences for victims, often forcing them to defend their lives. This is especially true for black women.
- Three women die each day from intimate partner violence.
- Black women are almost three times more likely to die at the hands of a current or ex-partner than members of other racial backgrounds.
- Among African American women killed by their partner, almost half were killed while in the process of leaving the relationship, highlighting the need to take extra precautions at that time.
Violence perpetrated against women and girls can put them at risk for incarceration because their survival strategies are routinely criminalized. From being coerced into criminal activity by their abusers to fighting back to defend their lives or their children’s lives, survivors of domestic violence can find themselves trapped between the danger of sometimes life-threatening violence and the risk of spending the rest of their lives in prison.
- According to the ACLU, nearly 60% of people in women’s prison nation-wide, and as many as 94% of some women’s prison populations, have a history of physical or sexual abuse before being incarcerated.
- A study of women incarcerated in New York’s Rikers Island found that most of the domestic violence survivors interviewed reported engaging in illegal activity in response to experiences of abuse, the threat of violence, or coercion by a male partner.
- Another study found that, of 525 abused women at a mental health center who had committed at least one crime, nearly half had been coerced into committing crimes by their batterers as “part of a structural sequence of actions in a climate of terror and diminished, violated sense of self.”
- Rita Smith, the executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence asserts that, “Most battered women who kill in self-defense end up in prison. There is a well-documented bias against women [in these cases].”
Black women and other marginalized people are especially likely to be criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated while trying to navigate and survive the conditions of violence in their lives.
- In 1991, the ratio of black women to white women convicted of killing their abusive husbands was nearly two to one.
- Women of color and low income women are disproportionately affected by mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence. Of survivors in a New York City study who had been arrested along with their abusers (dual arrest cases) or arrested as a result of a complaint lodged by their abuser (retaliatory arrest cases), 66% were African American or Latina, 43% were living below the poverty line, and 19% percent were receiving public assistance at the time.
Pregnant women or women who recently gave birth face a higher risk of escalating domestic violence.
- Each year, 324,000 pregnant women are physically or sexually assaulted by an intimate partner. Pregnancy can be an especially dangerous time for women in abusive relationships, and abuse can often begin or escalate during the pregnancy.
- Pregnancy complications, including low weight gain, anemia, infections, and first and second trimester bleeding, are significantly higher for victims of domestic violence.
- Domestic violence also accounts for a large portion of maternal mortality. Homicide is the second leading cause of injury related deaths in pregnant and post-partum women in the United States.
Chang, Jeani. et al. 2005. Homicide: A Leading Cause of Injury Deaths Among Pregnant and Postpartum Women in the United States, 1991–1999. American Journal of Public Health.
Mothers represent the majority of people in women’s prisons, creating a devastating impact on families, children, pregnancy, and childbirth.
- 70% of people in women’s prisons are mothers. The number of mothers in prison in the US increased by 122% between 1991 and 2007. Not only are the vast majority of people in women’s prisons mothers when they enter prison, but many of these people are also the primary caretakers of their children at home.
- 1.3 million children are affected by female imprisonment. This number includes the children at home when the mother is imprisoned and the babies born and raised in prison.
- In 33 states in the U.S. it is legal to shackle a female inmate while she is giving birth. Thirty-one of these states do not require prison employees to check with medical staff before determining whether or not a prisoner should be restrained.
