RT Article
T1 Intimate Partner Violence Reports During the COVID-19 Pandemic First Year in Portuguese Urban Areas: A Brief Report
JF Journal of family violence
VO 37
IS 6
SP 871
OP 880
A1 Capinha, Marta
A2 Guinote, Hugo
A2 Rijo, Daniel
LA English
YR 2022
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1813381453
AB The COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns about the exponential growth of intimate partner violence (IPV), both in numbers and severity. This brief report aims to describe the variation of IPV reports to the police during the pandemic in Portugal. Data were retrieved from a governmental national database. A five-year period was analyzed. Characteristics from the occurrence, as well as sociodemographic characteristics of victims and perpetrators, were described for each year. Data showed a 10.99% decrease of IPV reports to the police in 2020 compared with the average of the previous four years. Periods when more restrictive measures (e.g., lockdown) were decreed by the government corresponded to a higher decrease in IPV reports to the police. Significant differences in the distribution of crime location, crime reporting, type of violence, age of victims and perpetrators, and professional situation and financial dependence of perpetrators, were found between 2020 and previous years. COVID-19 pandemic does not seem to be associated with a raise in IPV reports to the police, nor higher severity of the reported cases. This brief report adds to previous research by providing detailed and systematically collected data about IPV occurrences during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
K1 IPV prevalence
K1 Police reports
K1 Covid-19
K1 Intimate Partner Violence
DO 10.1007/s10896-021-00332-y