Domestic Violence, a Real Issue

Domestic Violence, a Real Issue or Overly Exaggerated

Domestic violence refers to the physical abuse or violence directed to a domestic partner or a spouse; it is the behavior pattern in a close relationship employed to uphold or gain control and power over an intimate partner. Domestic violence holds several severe impacts to the society. The establishment of social service agencies and domestic violence courts has trigged increased awareness of domestic violence. Victims of domestic violence, more than ever before increasingly report cases of domestic violence in a bid to get social services and support from agencies dealing with this type of social problem. The increased number of reported domestic violence cases has made it appear as though the statistics are overly exaggerated, but they are not. As a result, domestic violence is real social issue, and not exaggerated. This paper, therefore argues that domestic violence is a real problem that can be solved through several perspectives with a solution-based approach being the most feasible approach to the problem.

Domestic Violence, a Real Issue or Overly Exaggerated

Domestic violence is a serious social problem that affects offenders, victims, witnesses of domestic violence and the entire society. Domestic violence holds health, social and economic impacts to the victims and the society. It entails violent confrontation amid household or family members. Abuse is emotional, physical, psychological or economic actions or action risks that affect another person. This involves any conduct that intimidates, manipulates, humiliates, injures, blames, wounds, terrorizes, hurts or frightens someone. Domestic violence occurs to anyone of age, race, religion and sexual orientation. It occurs to married couples, dating couples or couples that are living together.

Domestic violence is one of the most intricate social problems in the contemporary world. There is constant polemical, intense and emotional debate concerning how to put an end to domestic problem. More importantly, endless subsidiary debates have been held regarding the substance and sum of domestic violence. Scores of commentators deem that domestic violence is not as momentous as feminists contend. Commentators also assert scores of women's advocate intentionally manipulate and exaggerate data to satisfy their own agenda. Others assert that domestic violence is real and staid that can lead to permanent injuries and even death (Harne and Radford 3). This contention leaves many people with the question whether domestic Violence, is a real issue or is overly exaggerated?

Evaluation

Organized community responses to domestic violence have continued to develop since 1990s. Scores of communities move beyond working with individual agencies to react to domestic violence in a more comprehensive and coordinated manner. The efforts entail coordination among agencies within and among the criminal justice system, health care providers, domestic violence service providers, substance abuse services, and business, clergy and child welfare agencies. Education and prevention efforts in the community as well form part of the effort of addressing domestic problem (Wies and Haldane 108). The establishment of social services for domestic violence victims prompts increased awareness of domestic violence. Training and screening programs in organizations handling domestic violence issues have increased given the divergent human service areas, particularly health facilities and welfare offices, which have been selected as significant potential referral sources.

Some organizations train their frontline employees on the dynamics of domestic violence, the obstacles that victims of domestic violence encounter, and available services. These organizations also teach their staff how to identify victims and provide suitable services to victims when they come into the conventional social service agencies for help (Wies and Haldane 108). Domestic violence victims receive referrals to available services through the mainstream social services systems that they contact. Pollock, an author, asserts that in the similar manner that drug courts draw off drug offenders for specialized prosecution besides seeking to break the drug dependence cycle, domestic violence courts perform the same with perpetrators of domestic violence (Pollock 181).

Pollock also confirms that domestic violence entails assaults that take place between intimates, familial, parent-child, spousal, husband-wife, or between boyfriend and girlfriend or same sex partners (Pollock 181). The establishment of domestic violence courts besides other agencies has grown because of the developing awareness of the problem of domestic violence and reaction of the court systems to domestic violence. Mandatory arrest polices, for instance, have triggered a rise in prosecutions for domestic offenders.

The momentum for domestic violence courts and other coordinating agencies are resultant of Violence Against Women Act (Wies and Haldane 108). The increase in domestic violence courts and other social agencies increases awareness of domestic violence. More increase in awareness programs has enlightened domestic violence victims. As a result, accessibility of social services, increased awareness of domestic violence, and its effects as well as the willingness of victims, particularly women to use the available social services, have instigated a rise in statistics of domestic violence due to increased reporting. Provision of important and accessible social services augments the number of domestic violence cases reported. Therefore, domestic violence is a real social problem and it is not overly exaggerated.

Background Information

More than any other modern social problem, domestic violence challenges the scruples of the public, and there are no easy solutions. Scores of families continue to live in the shadow of the dark world of domestic violence, while children replicates the conducts of abusive adults. According to Davis, an author, people must recognize that domestic violence is more prevalent than all other types of violence combined (28). Reports from the Federal Bureau of statistics and Bureau of Justices Statistics indicate that homes have become risky places to be in. Perpetrators of domestic violence and people who have the potential to kill are not strangers (Davis 28). Those who claim love, even as they murder and abuse are girlfriends, lovers, husbands, fathers, mothers, wives and boyfriends.

Good examples of domestic violence perpetrated by those who claim to love include the appalling case of Amy Emily Annamunthodo killed by her father in full knowledge of her mother. Amy was a four-year-old girl from Trinidad and Tobago who was raped, sodomized and beaten to death by her alleged father, Marlon King. She died in may, 2006 while Laci Peterson, an American female was murdered in December 2002 by her husband Scott Peterson when she pregnant with her first child. The killers of Amy and Laci were not strangers, but people who claimed to love them. The tragic stories of abuse and beatings are not witnessed in television or in the streets, they happen right in homes between parents, and between parents and their children. Police officers and other legal agencies are expected to resolve family disputes given the prevalence of domestic violence. Given the shifts in statutes and policies due to increased cases of domestic violence, more arrests linked to domestic violence are made now more than ever before.

However, some commentators assume that domestic violence advocates exaggerate statistics to portray the society as a violent patriarchy in which females do their male counterparts continuously assault, and that the major risk to women is the males in their own lives (Davis 28). They also believe that numbers are exaggerated to serve as an ideological schema and enhance strategies that form a virtual presupposition of guilt in cases of domestic abuse (Forum 93). However, domestic violence and the increased level of violence involving both genders, given that men are also victims of domestic abuse, must be addressed . This is because domestic violence is a critical problem affecting not only an individual but also the entire society. Moreover, domestic violence does not only cause physical injuries, but also causes psychological and emotional harm. Failure to address domestic violence will instigate major problems and even more deaths in the society. Domestic violence is not exaggerated, but is a critical social problem that affects individuals, children and entire society.

Domestic violence is a social problem that affects every aspect of the society. While systems reactions are principally directed to the victims, augmented attention is also directed on the witnesses of domestic abuse who are children. It is estimated that between ten and twenty percent of children are at danger of increased disclosure to domestic violence. Moreover, children exposed to domestic hostility are at danger of facing neglect and abuse (Day 116) . Domestic violence leads to social, health and economical issues. Adults and children who experience domestic violence are at augmented risk of disclosure to traumatic occurrences, neglect, health issues and even death. These upshots instigate negative effects to children and may compromise their stability, safety and well-being. People exposed to domestic suffer from social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, attitudinal and long-term problems.

Notwithstanding the great development that has been made in the contemporary world, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. Over five million incidents take place on yearly basis. In America, sexual or domestic violence constantly hold serious economic upshots, costing businesses between three and five billion dollars each year in lost of productivity. According to Congress, the SAFE Act supports victims in escaping risky situations and curbs abuse from taking place (Congress 528). The SAFE Act not only protects victims of domestic violence, but also helps them become effective members of the country's economy. Domestic violence also account for about fifteen percent of total crimes committed in the United States. Reports from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institute of Health indicate that each year, 5, 300, 000 non-fatal violent victimization committed by intimated partners against women are recorded.

Female murder victims are likely to occur compared to male murder victims to have been murdered by intimate partners (Congress 528). According to Congress, half of female murder victims and four percent of male murder highlighted in the Disease Control, Prevention, and National Institute of Health reports met their death in the hands of intimate partners. With respect to government statistics, approximately 987, 400 rapes take place in United State where 89% of the rapes are perpetrated against female victims. Since 2001, cases of rapes have augmented by four percent (Congress 528).

Domestic violence more than any other criminal act, entails a wide range of relationships and behaviors. Unfortunately, criminal codes are in general rather blunt instruments, describing violence as individual actions, specifically threat of physical harm or physical assault aimed at causing physical harm (Buwaza 4). In reality, most researchers precisely conceptualize domestic violence as a range of conducts, some clearly criminal in temperament, others more manipulative intended to exercise coercive control entailing sexual, physical, verbal and psychological conducts utilized to control another person. This approach focuses on the blueprint of abusive and violent conducts within the relationship as opposed to individual actions of perpetrators. Only in recent time, have criminal codes evolved to the point through which they have begun to acknowledge innumerable abuse forms, but also prohibiting harassment or stalking (Buwaza 4). . Even though such statutes solely centered on physical abuse, they are not as widely utilized and they hold foremost inconsistencies. Additionally, as a crime, stalking is difficult to prove.

Very little is recognized regarding the employment of these laws as a productive element of preventing abuse in its totality instead of individual actions of physical abuse evident in typical domestic violence laws. According to Buzawa, an author, examination of 2000 police reports in a ten-year period for all assaults indicated that eighteen to twenty percent of all victims were viewed as offenders (Buwaza 5). The victim-offender dichotomy confines people from viewing domestic assault as a form of interaction that in some situations may be maladaptive rejoinder to conflict in families. Victims and offenders usually experience the effect of such labeling, and in order to get services, victims must accept their publicly framed condition as victim and the anticipations that go along with this label.

Moreover, when there is an intricacy in identifying which party is the victim, police experiences the choice of either taking no action given that there is no lawfully recognizable victim or inconsistently, of arresting both parties (Buwaza 4). Moreover, there has been great concern over increasing rates of dual arrests in some jurisdiction through which both parties to an occurrence get arrested instead of the customary practice where police only identifies just one victim and one offender. While the dual arrest may be valid, research indicate that police officers employ dual arrests as a response towards presumptive or mandatory arrest policies thereby failing to differentiate self-defense on the victims' part. Domestic violence criminal codes also hold incomprehensible gaps in coverage. The links involved under these criminal codes differ from state to state and sometimes only include married individuals only or in some situations include past and current intimate partners, children, any relative, siblings, and people living in the same residence or any family member (Buwaza 4).

Proposed Solutions

Solution 1: Legal Responses and Interventions

Serious domestic violence is lop-sided; women's aggression against men differs considerably in terms of the consequences and context. The context of women's violence is often self-defense and the upshots for men are less severe (Buwaza 4). Females' aggression towards their male intimate partners does not take place with similar ferocity or frequency as men's violence towards female intimate partners. From this prospect, responses to domestic violence must be developed which must include legal responses. Policies aimed at tackling men's violence against women and strategies to support female victims must be developed (Burton 6).

To allow criminal justice system to operate efficiently, implicit need for the identification of a crime with a defined offender and victim in the context of an acknowledged applicable criminal law is paramount. Given the severity of the sanctions of criminal, it must be based purely on objective criteria for the determination of domestic violence. Nevertheless, an individual's condition may be intricate to identify and may as well not be constant in the several incidents that may take place during a given couple's relationship (Davis 38). Unfortunately, there are scores of violent families who are victimized and violent in both private and public settings and at different points in their lives

Solution 2: Counseling: A Systems Perspective

One fundamental assumption of a systems perspective is that an alteration is invariable. No domestic violence perpetrator is abusive always. As a result, every problem blueprint entails some sort of exception to the rule. Such an approach lies behind ones belief in the potential and strengths of participants. Notwithstanding problems or deficiencies, participants may think they have, there cannot lack a time when these offenders tackle their life conditions in a more fulfilling manner (Davis 38). There are times when a person is not violent and utilizes other ways to solve differences and conflicts. Such exceptions offer a clue for solutions and underscore a participant's unnoticed resources and strengths. Through the system approach, therapists help participants in amplifying, reinforcing, noticing and sustaining these exceptions. When offenders are involved in non-problem conduct, they achieve a solution building process

Solution 3: Deterrence Based Theories

Through treating domestic violence principally as a criminal justice issue, emphasis has considerably been placed on the criminals who commit violence and what can put off prospective violence. In this regard, deterrence based theories of felonious and reoffending must hold predominated policy responses. Largely tactical issues of certainty of deterrence and apprehension through aggressive prosecution, arrest and compelled attendance in batterer treatment programs and target hardening through issuance of restraining orders are paramount (Congress 528). Direct victim-based perspective and victim assistance to the problem must be adopted given that they have been downgraded to incidental condition usually not viewed as helpful by important policy makers and activists.

Solution 4: Counseling: Solution-based Approach

Counseling helps people in working out their problems and potentially impedes the occurrence of domestic violence. People who abuse their partners and relatives do not ask themselves why they mount abusive behaviors to their loved ones. However, a professional can ask them questions that will help them understand the roots of their problems through asking those questions that relates to their families' backgrounds and occurrence of violent cases in their families during their developmental stage (Milner 31). Social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists among others hold the capacity to make offenders contemplate on the foundation of their abusive problems.

Among the major causes of domestic violence, include drugs and alcohol. Although there is a disagreement regarding the role of drugs and alcohol in domestic violence, the truth of the matter is drugs and alcohol can cause or trigger domestic violence (Davis 24). People may take drugs and alcohol that makes them lose control and beat their partners. In such a situation, counseling helps in helping the offender to control or address his/her drug problem. Counseling through dialogue and appropriate use of appropriate language helps offenders get to the surface of their problems and create sustainable solutions. Dialogue facilitates construction of solution and meanings through description of observable behaviors, goals and progressives lives in novel and more beneficial ways.