NCJRS - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

In 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program conducted a study on violence among family members and intimate partners. The data for the study came from the UCR Program's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) database, which contains information on each single incident and arrest reported by the participating local, county, and state law enforcement agencies. NIBRS collects data for 22 crime categories and includes information about each incident, the offenses committed within the incident, and details about the victim and offender. Currently, 5,271 law enforcement agencies contribute NIBRS data to the national UCR Program. The data submitted by these agencies represent 20 percent of the U.S. population and 16 percent of the crime statistics collected by the UCR Program (Crime in the United States, 2003, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004). Findings from this study include:
- 1,551,143 incidents of family violence were reported to NIBRS between 1996 and 2001.
- Of the 1,551,143 incidents of family violence, the most prevalent relationship was boyfriend/girlfriend (29.6 percent) followed by spouse (24.4 percent).
- 20,955 elderly relatives were the victims of simple assault between 1996 and 2001.
- In 2001, 79,972 incidents of family violence involved substance abuse.
- From 1996-2001, the age group with the most number of victims (1,160,300) was 18-65.
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sponsored study, Spouse Assault Replication Program, analyzed 4,032 incidents, from five jurisdictions, in which males assaulted their female intimate partners. The study found that “Arresting batterers was consistently related to reduced subsequent aggression against female intimate partners, although not all comparisons met the standard level of statistical significance" (The Effects of Arrest on Intimate Partner Violence: New Evidence From the Spouse Assault Replication Program, National Institute of Justice, 2001).
Initial analysis of a 12 month survey on family abductions conducted in 1999 by the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART–2), National Household Surveys of Adult Caretakers and Youth , revealed that,"Fifty-three percent of family abducted children were abducted by their biological father, and 25 percent were abducted by their biological mother" (Children Abducted by Family Members: National Estimates and Characteristics, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2002).
NIJ sponsored a longitudinal research study, conducted in a metropolitan Midwestern county area, that compared the arrest records of 908 abused and/or neglected children, age 11 or younger at the time of abuse/neglect, with arrest records for 667 children who were not abused or maltreated. Initial results were gathered in 1988 and additional arrest data was gathered in 1994. In 1988, the average age of the subjects was 26 and 32.5 when the arrest records were reexamined in 1994. According to the updated arrest records, "Being abused or neglected as a child increases the likelihood of arrest as a juvenile by 53 percent and of arrest for a violent crime as an adult by 38 percent" (An Update on the Cycle of Violence, National Institute of Justice, 2001).

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