Intimate Partner Violence

U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics

Provides information on violence by intimates (current or former spouses, girlfriends, or boyfriends) since the redesign of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The redesigned survey has new questions about violence by intimates. The report covers trends in intimate violence, characteristics of victims (race, sex, age, income, ethnicity, and whether the victims live in urban, suburban, or rural areas), type of crime (physical assault, verbal threats), and trends for reporting to police. Intimate victimizations measured include rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Data on murder by intimates are also given. The data for this report came from the NCVS and the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports.

Highlights include the following:

Lethal
Intimate partners committed fewer murders in each of the 3 years 1996, 1997, and 1998 than in any other year since 1976.
Between 1976 and 1998, the number of male victims of intimate partner homicide fell an average 4% per year and the number of female victims fell an average 1%.
Nonlethal

The number of female victims of intimate violence declined from 1993 to 1998. In 1998 women experienced an estimated 876,340 violent offenses at the hands of an intimate, down from 1.1 million in 1993.
In both 1993 and 1998, men were victims of about 160,000 violent crimes by an intimate partner.