New research details uptick in domestic violence calls to police in early COVID period

I noted a few weeks ago that the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) — which is a favorite new organization in part because they asked me to take a close look at the 1994 Crime Bill's sentencing provisions and because they recently produced a great report urging criminal justice reforms — has launched an important and impressive new commission to assess the impacts of COVID-19 on the criminal justice system (basic details here).  Today via that CCJ commission comes new research on domestic violence calls for service.  This six-page research brief, authored by Profs Emily Leslie and Riley Wilson,  is titled "Sheltering in Place and Domestic Violence: Evidence from Calls for Service during COVID-19," and here is its overview:

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has pushed people to spend more time at home, amidst increased uncertainty and soaring unemployment rates.  The best available evidence tells us that these conditions have the potential to increase domestic violence (Lindo et al., 2018; Card and Dahl, 2011).  News outlets around the world reported increased reports of domestic violence as the pandemic spread globally during Spring 2020.

We use data on calls for service to the police from 14 large American cities to compare domestic violence calls before and after the pandemic began in the United States, relative to trends during the same period in 2019.  The pandemic led to a 7.5% increase in calls for service during March, April, and May.  The biggest increase came during the first five weeks after widespread social distancing began, when domestic violence calls were up 9.7%.  State-mandated stay-at-home orders and school closures came later, suggesting the increase was not only a response to shelter-in-place policies.  The increase came across a broad range of demographic and socioeconomic groups, and includes households without a recent history of domestic violence calls.