Domestic Violence Death Reviews and Femicide

There is a global epidemic of fatal and near fatal violence against female intimate partners. This book is aimed at ending it by implementing domestic violence death reviews.

Hundreds of Domestic Violence Death Review committees, teams, and panels are operating in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. At the same time, thousands of women are being injured physically, emotionally, and cognitively, and a smaller number are being killed, by their male intimate partners. Femicides represent the tip of the iceberg for non-fatal and fatal injuries inflicted on intimate female partners, and taken together, they constitute an epidemic.

This book investigates attempts made by Domestic Violence Death Reviews (DVDRs) in three different countries to end the epidemic by making recommendations to community-based organizations and agencies, such as women’s shelters, substance abuse treatment agencies, and police forces. Thousands of recommendations have been made since these Reviews were first created in 1994, but why have they not decreased the rates of femicide? This book answers this question, describes steps DVDRs can take to increases their fitness for preventing femicide in communities, and also how establishing a DVDR in an indigenous First Nation in Canada can achieve the same end. Readers who are not familiar with DVDRs will learn about similarities and differences in how they operate in three different countries, and why one of them—the Domestic Homicide Review in the United Kingdom—is identified as the model worth replicating in Canada and the United States.