NCJ Number
147255
Date Published
1993
Length
90 pages
Annotation
A 1993 conference focused on the responsibility of the legal and medical communities to increase their cooperation and collaboration and to involve their members in a major national effort to acknowledge and prevent violence against women.
Abstract
Participants were more than 200 physicians, attorneys, law enforcement officials, judges, epidemiologists, hospital administrators, psychologists, and representatives of victims' organizations and women's advocacy groups. They note that females are at highest risk of assault, rape, or murder by male intimates rather than strangers, but violence prevention has not received the central place it deserves on the women's health agenda. Participants recommended improved enforcement of civil protective orders, police training and strict enforcement of mandatory arrest laws, increased attention by health care providers to the symptoms of violence, interdisciplinary epidemiological research, and training of judges regarding sex stereotyping and sex discrimination in their decisionmaking. Other recommended actions are the development of integrated community programs to protect battered women, passage of the Violence Against Women Act, and long-term prevention efforts based on education. List of resources and addresses of organizations represented