Demographics Of Domestic Violence In Colorado — 2005

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The fiscal year 2005 statistics for the Colorado courts for domestic violence charges, with associated mandatory restraining orders, are given in their Table 30, with a total of 14,726, and 365 cases of DV restraining (protection) order violations for a total of 15,091 domestic violence cases in 2005. Civil restraining orders are tabulated in their Table 29, totaling 13,580 (7,478 of these orders are for domestic abuse), for a combined total of 28,671. That total is down 644 (–2%) from the previous year, the second year in a row the number of restraining orders has declined.

The tables from which the data presented below are drawn is compiled by the State Court Administrator's Office and are available from the Colorado State Court Web site. The data are combined and presented here in Table 51 together with the population-normalized values for each judicial district.

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From 2002 on the State Court Administrator has broken the number of restraining orders issued into the separate categories of (a) domestic abuse and (b) all others. The number of restraining orders issued in each judicial district are shown in parentheses (number of domestic abuse orders) in Table 51. The values for judicial districts where more than half the restraining orders are for domestic abuse are shown in (bold). However, for consistency with data from previous years, it is necessary to use the total number of restraining orders for each judicial district and accept the inherent bias. The statewide average (minus Denver) for all criminal and civil restraining (now called protection) orders is 70 per 10,000 citizens for 2005.

The number of restraining orders has increased over time, from 21,475 in 1998 (Table 38) to 28,671 in 2005 (Table 51), a 34% increase in eight years while the sampled population has only increased 18%. The only heartening news is that the numbers of restraining orders has been declining slightly for the past two years. However, the mean number of restraining orders for twenty-one of the twenty-two Colorado judicial districts for 2005 is 81 per 10,000 residents, with a standard deviation of 23 (Table 51), scarcely different from previous years.

In terms of the rate of restraining orders, the Third, Fourth, Tenth, Twelfth, and Sixteenth judicial districts once again lead the state for the year 2005 with 102, 106, 113, 114, and 133 restraining orders per 10,000 citizens respectively (Table 51). May god have pity on children and families in these draconian courts.

While the restraining order rate has decreased 9% in 2005 from the 2003 high, this trend does not suggest the domestic violence problem is being solved, or offenders deterred, by current law and practice (see Table 79).

If restraining orders are being issued at the same ratio of 69 per 10,000 citizens in the entire United States as in Colorado, there are approximately 2 million such orders being issued every year. That is a frightening number.

Percent of restraining orders versus percent of population in 2005

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A simple test of equity is the percentage of restraining orders issued in a judicial district versus the percentage of the population residing in that district. If uniform standards were being applied the percent of population would roughly equal the percent of restraining orders issued in that district. Any variance should diminish as the sample size increases. Thus large judicial districts like the Fourth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Twentieth should show smaller variances than small districts like the Third, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty Second.

Allowing for differences in the populations of the judicial districts we still find in Table 51 that again in 2005 the Fourth Judicial District has issued an exceptionally high number of restraining orders (21.8% of total) relative to its percentage of the state population (14.3%) sampled.

Although small districts, the Seventh (3.2% of orders, 2.3% of population) and Sixteenth (1.4% of orders, 0.7% of population) judicial districts consistently issue a much greater percentage of restraining orders than their populations would suggest.

While a larger judicial district, the Tenth (6.0% of orders, 3.7% of population) also falls into this category.

These four judicial districts fail this simple test of equity.

Comparison of domestic violence and abuse with other misdemeanors in 2005

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Table 52 is a continuing attempt, for eight years now, to see where and whether restraining orders and domestic violence correlate with other societal problems. The implicit assumption in Table 52, as in previous years, is that domestic violence is associated with other problems such as alcoholism, drug use, etc., in a judicial district. For example, underage alcohol abuse and drug use would be associated with abusive or broken homes, and that Joe Six Pack likely gets into other kinds of trouble, e.g., bar brawls, for which he is arrested as well.

However, if all other categories of similar crimes are at or below the state averages except domestic violence, it suggests a witch hunt is being conducted for that specific offense. Such actions by law enforcement officials and the courts are generally regarded as an abuse of process and a violation of the equal protection clauses of the state and federal constitutions.

In Table 52 a relationship between domestic violence and abuse and other misdemeanors is discernible in the Third, Fifth, Twelfth, and Sixteenth Judicial Districts. These are depressed rural areas ranging in population from 23,000 to 47,000 residents.

These relationships are examined over a period of eight years in Table 66.

Perjury prosecutions

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As has been true in previous years Colorado courts again failed to prosecute perjury. Table 30 from the state court administrator only shows 4 cases of perjury in 2005. In our experience the only time perjury is prosecuted at all is if the person admits it.

Subornation of perjury is not a criminal offense in Colorado and in People v. Turner 04 SA 178 the state supreme court ruled that a defendant in a criminal domestic violence case had no right to obtain documentation of what was probably subornation of perjury against him.

The rule of law cannot long endure if perjury is tolerated and subornation of perjury is condoned and even encouraged.

Protection order violations

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One of the suspicions about why there is such a discrepancy between police statistics and domestic violence court cases is that protection (restraining) order violations are included in the court statistics. In 2005, for the first time the state court reported protection order violations separately. Table 30 only shows 365 total cases of restraining order violations compared with 14,726 domestic violence cases and 7,478 domestic abuse protection orders (Table 51). This suggests that protection order violations are a very minor (~2%) percent of domestic violence court cases.

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Last modified 9/10/24