Demographic Summary by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.
Demographic Summary by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.© 2003 Equal Justice Foundation
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| Chapter 10 — Demographics Of Domestic Violence In Colorado |
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Data do not support an increase in domestic violence
Criminal domestic violence is not underreported
Why are there so many domestic violence court cases?
Unwarranted denial of civil rights
A lack of equal protection under the law
What do the demographic data show?
As previously estimated, a minimum of 25% of domestic violence and abuse cases in Colorado are false allegations. In some judicial districts, such as the Fourth, at least two thirds of such cases are based on false claims. Overall available data suggest that one half the claims of domestic violence and abuse in Colorado are false and are an abuse of due process under color of law.
The disparity is particularly evident when police and court data are compared with National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimates (Table 71). This inequality has increased in the past decade and now exceeds the 33% estimate given by Massachusetts Judge Malcolm Jones.
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Police incidents: Colorado Bureau of Investigation Court filings: Colorado State Court Administrator for all judicial districts except Denver. It is estimated that an additional 2,500 DV cases are filed in Denver each year plus another 500 DV cases filed by municipalities within Colorado. National Crime Victimization Survey: For 1998 NCVS estimates DV occurred in 0.7% of households. That dropped to 0.5% of households for 1999-2000, and to 0.4% for 2001-2004. The 2005-2006 estimates assumes 0.4% of households. Not all incidents in the NCVS surveys are reported to police. Except for year 2000 the number of Colorado households is estimated based on state population divided by 2.53 persons per household. 1. Prior to 2005 the CBI data did not include data from Ault PD, Brighton PD, Denver PD, Greeley PD, Johnstown PD, Kersey PD, Milliken PD, Minturn PD, Weld County Sheriff and Wiggins PD. Thus, 2005 values cannot be directly compared with previous years. 2. Prior to 2006 the CBI data did not include data from Arvada PD, Blackhawk PD, Campo PD, Cañon City PD, Colorado State University-Fort Collins PD, DeBeque Marshall, Eagle PD, Fort Collins PD, Frederick PD, Gunnison PD, Lone Tree PD, and Manzanola PD. Thus, 2006 values cannot be compared with previous years. |
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A 50% estimate of abuse of process is also in reasonable agreement with the estimate given by Cathy Young for Massachusetts. There, more than half of protection orders did not involve any allegation of violence or abuse.
Further, the ever increasing numbers of police and court cases for domestic violence evident in Table 71 are dramatic evidence that these draconian practices are failing to achieve the presumed objective of curtailing intimate partner violence.
In those seven Colorado judicial districts tabulated in Table 58 the abuse of restraining orders was much higher than the state average. Over the past ten years those seven judicial districts have prosecuted a mean of 111 domestic violence and abuse cases per 10,000 citizens per year (mean of the means). That is more than twice the average number of cases, 55 per 10,000 residents (mean of the means), in the six judicial districts shown in Table 64 and one-and-one-half times the state average for 2007 (Table 53).
It would be well to keep in mind Erin Pizzey's admonition that:
Available data (Table 38 for 1999, Table 40 for 2000, Table 72 for 2001, Table 44 for 2002, Table 46 for 2003, Table 48 for 2004, Table 50 for 2005, Table 52 for 2006, and Table 54 for 2007) summarized in Table 63 for the Third, Twelfth, and Sixteenth judicial districts shows that related crimes of alcohol, drugs, offenses against persons, etc. are also high indicating deep-seated societal problems in those areas beyond just domestic violence. For example, unemployment tends to be high along Colorado's southern border. But it is also very likely that the destruction of children, relationships, families, and marriages by the draconian persecution of "domestic violence" is contributing to the other crimes found in these districts. The destruction of families, marriages, and children by the courts in these districts is alomost certainly pushing many into a self-destructive vortex that is spinning downward out of control.
However, there is no correlation between domestic violence and other misdemeanors in the Fourth and Tenth judicial districts (Table 63). While the economy declined in 2001 and 2002, and only began to recover in 2003, the Front Range was booming between 1998 and 2000 and after 2003 through 2007. So economic hardship is not an underlying cause of domestic violence in these judicial districts. Also, the population is diverse.
Certainly within the Fourth Judicial District there is no evidence of any significant increase in domestic violence over the years 1990-2004 (Table 56). In fact, arrests in Colorado Springs for simple assault, which includes most DV arrests, have consistently declined for the past 10 years (Table 55) and 911 domestic disturbance calls have dramatically decreased (Table 56). Thus, for these two judicial districts the problems with domestic abuse and violence appear to plainly lie within the courts, not the people or likely even law enforcement. That inference is borne out by decrease in domestic violence cases resulting in greatly increased protection orders as redfems respond to better oversight and due process by the district attorney, as graphically shown in Table 62. Clearly, the issue isn't one of domestic violence per se but a radical ideology using propaganda to obtain government funding at the cost of destroying children, families, marriage, and, ultimately, society.
Since ironhanded domestic violence laws were passed statewide in 1994 the major effect that I have found is the drastic reduction in 911 domestic disturbance calls evident in Table 56.
Despite draconian efforts to control domestic violence in Colorado, the court records show the number of civil restraining orders issued increased from 13,253 (Table 37) in 1999 to 17,330 (Table 53) in 2007, a 31% increase . During the the nine years from 1999 to 2007 the sampled population increased from 3,556,358 to 4,273,166, or just 20%. A population-proportional linear increase of 20% in domestic violence criminal cases suggests there should have been only 15,900 cases in 2007, 1,400 fewer than reported.in the measured population. Thus, DV court cases are increasing in number much faster than the population is growing.
A population-proportional linear increase of 20% in all civil protection orders from the 10,624 reported in 1999 (Table 37) would suggest about 12,750 in 2007, as compared with 13,261 actual (Table 53), a reasonably close approximation. And since 2002, when the state court administrator began providing data for just domestic abuse protection orders the number has decreased from 7,513 (Table 43) to 6,687 (Table 53) for the sampled population, with the notable exception of the Fourth Judicial District. No data are presently available as to the number of protection orders that are made permanent and it is fundamental to note that in Colorado the effects of a permanent protection order for domestic abuse are of the same magnitude and effect as a criminal convicton for domestic violence.
The trend for the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS, Figure 2, p.2) is downward while DV police incidents and court cases continue to increase in Colorado faster than the population.
Sociological data also consistently show intimate partner violence is decreasing (Table 7). In the How Common Is Domestic Violence? section we review data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Gaquin (1977-78) examined NCVS data for the years 1973-1975 and found an extremely low rate of intimate partner violence of 2.2 incidents per 1,000 couples, or 0.22%. Twenty years later Dugan (2003, p. 299) examined the NCVS data from January 1992 to June 1998 for 529,829 households in the United States. She reports: "From those, 2,873, or 0.5%, reported at least one incident of domestic violence (unweighted)." 0.5% of households is 0.2% of the population. And in April 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics released an update on the NCVS showing that since 2001 only 0.4% of households include a member victimized by an intimate partner.
The 2000 Census found 1,658,238 households in Colorado. Using Gaquin's (1977-78) value of 0.22% as a low-end estimate of households that suffer an incident of criminal domestic violence in a given year would suggest only 3,650 incidents in 2000. Dugan's (2003, p. 299) more contemporary, and larger sample, value of 0.5% suggests 8,300 reported and unreported incidents of criminal domestic violence in Colorado in 2000. For Census 2000, Table 39 also includes a comparison of the NCVS estimate of criminal domestic violence for a judicial district with the reported court cases. Once again that comparison highlights those districts where abuse of process is rampant.
For 2007 the NCVS suggests one criminal incident of domestic violence, as reported by citizens, for every 250 households, or 0.4%. Assuming 2.53 people per household with an estimated population for Colorado of 4,861,515 people suggests suggests only 7,700 reported and unreported actual incidents of domestic violence compared with 11,215 police reports and an estimated minimum 21,500 court cases if Denver and municpal cases are included with the reported 17,330 (Table 53). Thus, there are nearly three times the number of criminal domestic violence court cases as estimated by the best statistical data available, and roughly 50% more police reports than NCVS data would account for.
In 2000 there were 3,529 cases of domestic violence filed in the Fourth Judicial District (Table 39). If we use Dugan's (2003, p. 299) finding from NCVS data that 0.5% of households have a criminal incident of DV in a given year and the 2000 census value of 200,402 households in the 4 th in 2000, there should have been about 1,000 reported and unreported cases of domestic violence in that year in this district, or less than one-third of the cases filed in court. And the NCVS data are what the crime victims are reporting! Subsequently the district attorney has been rectifying the abuse of process evident in the horrific numbers of criminal domestic violence cases as shown in Table 60 and Table 62.
However, in an apparent ideological response to the district attorney's efforts to restore due process and reduce the number of false criminal allegations of domestic violence, TESSA has dramatically increased the number of domestic abuse protection orders from 1,733 in 2002 to 2,315 in 2007 (Table 62), a 34% increase. Conversely, the number of criminal DV cases has been reduced from 3,364 (Table 43) to 3,014 (Table 53), a 10% decrease during the same period despite an 8% (43,692 people) increase in population.
It is also of interest to note that the number of defendants who pled "Not Guilty" during the draconian Fast Track hearings increased from 40% in 2000 to 72% in 2007 (Table 60) in the Fourth Judical District. While correlation does not imply causation, nonetheless this dramatic increase in not guilty pleas coincides with the introduction of this web site in November 1999 and the advice of the Equal Justice Foundation to always plead Not Guilty and demand a jury trial when charged with domestic violence.
It is often claimed in feminist literature that domestic violence is one of the most underreported crimes. The data in Table 71 clearly contradicts that speculation.
It isn't that criminal domestic violence is underreported but that "domestic violence" is overdefined. Current laws and practices have thus led to the problem that citizens are afraid to call police because of the draconian response under current law and they are becoming more frightened of law enforcement than they are of their intimate partners (see Table 55 and bar chart in Table 56).
In the section When It Is Not Domestic Violence I have put forth numerous examples where law enforcement must not be involved if society is to survive and privacy preserved.
Violence between intimate partners may also be necessitated by circumstances or required by law, but such violence is not criminal, i.e., actus reus cannot be established beyond a reasonable doubt. Examples would include self defense or forcefully restraining an intimate partner from jumping in front of a speeding car.
There are also limitations on what human behavior can or should be controlled by criminal statutes. Regardless of the laws, couples will argue, and such arguments will sometimes become physical. And normal couples roughhouse and play with each other. A pillow fight is not domestic violence as radical ideologues would have us believe. Thus, if families and marriages are to survive, society must limit its intrusions into personal relationships to those incidents where the violence is inflicted knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally. The due process burden of proving mens rea and actus rea is upon the prosecution and these fundamental tenets of the rule of law must not be abrogated on the basis of radical feminist (redfem) ideology.
The normal expectation is that district attorneys will file fewer court cases for a given crime than reported police incidents, as not every incident police investigate will result in a chargeable offense that might reasonably be proven by the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury. For this reason prosecutors are given broad discretion in the application of nolle prosequi, and required to assume that defendants are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers in criminal domestic violence cases.
It should be noted, however, that the same due process protections do not apply for domestic abuse protection orders that are granted ex parte (without the defendant being present) like tissue paper.
The increases in court filings regarding domestic violence and abuse in the sample period of 1999 through 2007 (Table 71), without supporting evidence from any other agency, survey, or research, leaves the impression we are dealing with a justice(?) system gone mad. Sometimes men are even convicted of domestic violence today for an association with a stranger or a babysitter.
As the courts are reimbursed on a case basis, such an imbalance has the flavor of fraudulent reporting. Other factors are that domestic violence is an add-on charge to anything and everything. One finds citizens convicted of domestic violence and driving under the influence, trespassing, disorderly conduct, false imprisonment, telephone obstruction, indecent exposure, etc. However, the largest category of court cases not included in the CBI statistics is harassment. Even if all harassment cases reported in 2006 involved domestic violence, they only comprise 15%, at most, of such cases.
Violation of protection orders, once thought to be a major portion of court cases not tracked by CBI statistics amounted to just 11% of the protection orders issued in 2007 and 20% of criminal domestic violence cases (Table 53).
If one-half (low of 25%, high of 75%) of all domestic violence charges and domestic abuse protection orders are false allegations, as demographic analysis strongly suggests, then roughly 15,000 Colorado citizens, mostly men, are now charged with domestic violence and issued protection orders without reasonable basis every year that:
• Force them out of their homes with little more than the clothes they stand in.
• Makes arrest mandatory, requires no warrant, and arrest is often based on nothing more than hearsay (an estimated one half of all DV arrests are based on hearsay evidence).
• Are based on "probable cause," which is often nothing more than the statement of an angry female based on something as intangible as the "potential for emotional harm," or hearsay based on a phone call from a neighbor or passerby who hears loud noises or an argument.
• Allows police to search a home without a warrant.
• Assumes a man is guilty until he can prove his innocence, and he is often still regarded as guilty even after that, particularly if he is in the military or holds a public service position.
• Punishes men if they plead innocent but sets them free if they plead guilty.
• Punishes and imprisons men before a trial or without one.
• Denies men the right to confront their accuser and obtain witnesses in their defense.
• Keeps men from any children they may have had with their accuser, and sometimes even when men have been granted custody of those children.
• Seizes property without redress.
• Bans men from possessing weapons even if required for their employment.
• Sends men to "therapy" that often amounts to little more than an ideological rant about the evils of the patriarchy.
• Provides what is commonly only a mockery of a hearing or a trial.
• Gives men a lifetime sentence with no possibility of parole.
• Never punishes the perjury and false allegations of their accusers and prohibits them from obtaining evidence of subornation of perjury against them.
These are acts of a police state and the policies of tyrants.
Such actions destroy children, families, relationships, and marriages by the tens of thousands in Colorado alone.
Commonly the only way a man convicted of domestic violence or abuse can avoid violating a protection order is to move away. That is particularly true in the rural areas of Colorado or if the woman is seeking vengeance.
All contact with a man's children will probably be lost if he is forced to move, though he will be hounded, his professional and drivers licenses taken away, and he will probably be jailed in a de facto debtor's prison should his child support payments slip.
Whether a man goes to jail for violating the protection order, or moves out of town, he will probably lose his job and any benefits. Worse, in trying to get a new job, he now has a criminal record. After all, who wants to hire a convicted "wife beater."
Professional licenses, e.g., medical, stockbrokers, professional engineer, etc., are commonly denied to those with domestic violence convictions. Typically a DV conviction or a permanent protection order prevents the offender from using a firearm, e.g., military, police, security guard under the Lautenberg Amendment; revokes or denies their security clearance; or the ability to handle or transport hazardous materials.
Under Colorado law a convicted DV offender cannot be the custodial parent. So, if he (and sometimes she) has children, a DV conviction or protection order likely means he will become another "Deadbeat Dad" though "Driven-Away Dad" would be a much more accurate description.
As lenders and landlords commonly check backgrounds on COcourts.com or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation records check, it will be difficult and sometimes impossible for a man convicted of domestic violence to rent an apartment, buy a house, or get a loan.
Short of execution, there are few more cruel punishments than those based on the mere accusation, or even hearsay, alleging domestic violence or abuse.
Sadly, the most common basis for domestic violence accusations is simply a loud argument between a couple with possibly some pushing and shoving. But a 911 call is almost certainly mutual assured destruction of the relationship and, all too frequently, the individuals involved and, sadly, their children.
With current court statistics it is also possible to separate restraining orders from domestic violence cases. The glaring example is the incredible number of domestic violence cases, 3,948 in 1999, 3,529 in 2000 (1,000 predicted from NCVS data), 3,459 in 2001 , 3,364 in 2002, 3,493 in 2003, 3,355 in 2004, 3,220 in 2005, 3,125 in 2006, and 3,014 in 2007 in the Fourth Judicial District encompassing El Paso (includes Colorado Springs) and Teller counties, more than three times the predicted number. As shown in Table 63, filings in this district for other misdemeanors are near average, and unemployment was at or near record low levels until 2001, so the problems there are not inherent in the populace.
The First Judicial District, with a comparable population to El Paso and Teller counties, only had 705 DV cases filed in 1999, 859 in 2000 (1,040 predicted from NCVS data), 1,188 in 2001, 1,275 in 2002, 1,354 in 2003, 1,328 in 2004, 1,368 in 2005, 1,249 in 2006, and 1,520 in 2007.
With 236,000 more people presently, the Eighteenth Judicial District had a total of only 1,058 domestic violence cases in 1999, 1,279 in 2000 (1,300 predicted from NCVS data), 1,581 in 2001, 1,727 in 2002, 1,864 in 2003, 1,664 in 2004, 1,558 in 2005, 1,836 in 2006, and 1,970 in 2007.
The Fourth Judicial District is thus prosecuting roughly three times the number of domestic violence cases as other comparable population centers in Colorado.
In El Paso and Teller counties, a minimum of 75% of the domestic violence charges are made without reasonable basis. It is also clear from Table 56 that these draconian practices are causing citizens to fear law enforcement more than they do an abusive partner.
That is not equal protection under the law!
We can imagine no greater violations of our fundamental freedoms than those imposed by the widespread abuse of restraining orders and unfounded domestic violence allegations in Colorado.
The shear burden of the often trivial "he said/she said" domestic violence and abuse cases place upon the court system has not been accounted for. As shown in Table 72, domestic violence cases exceed all other categories of misdemeanors. Since 2001 domestic violence cases have accounted for over 20% of all misdemeanors in Colorado and the total percentage is still increasing as of 2007. Yet all available evidence shows intimate partner violence is decreasing, or is unchanged as a percentage of the population, and is but a small fraction of the crimes committed in Colorado.
Given the draconian provisions of present law, domestic violence charges must take at least twice the court and law enforcement time and efforts as other misdemeanors. Police and prosecutors tied up in court or on calls for trumped-up DV charges are unavailable for other duties.
The corresponding drain on police resources of pursuing often trivial "he said/she said" cases is immense. Thus, the safety of the general population is sacrificed without supporting evidence that there is an epidemic of domestic violence. Quite the opposite as Table 57 makes clear!
Underlying the burden such cases place on the courts are the draconian provisions of the current laws:
• Mandatory arrests without a warrant.
• Plea bargaining to a lesser charge that doesn't involve domestic violence is forbidden in such cases under C.R.S. § 18-6-801(3).
• Conviction on charges that include domestic violence or a hearing that imposes a permanent protection order imposes a lifetime penalty.
• Experience shows that a trial to a judge by a man in Colorado is simply a long, slow way of pleading guilty.
• To clear their names, citizens must demand a jury trial for misdemeanors where domestic violence is alleged.
• Juries rarely convict on charges of domestic violence if the man, or woman, is represented by a competent and experienced criminal defense attorney.
• Juries often feel their time is being wasted by even bringing such "he said/she said" cases to trial.
• Every year the courts find it harder to obtain jurors.
Having waded laboriously through this mass of statistics, what have we learned? For the years during which consistent DV data are available, currently 1995 to 2007 for Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) police data (Table 67) and for court data (Table 53), the following trends are clear:
• The number of court cases in Colorado for domestic violence and abuse is increasing both in total number and on a per capita basis (Table 67).
• There are consistently roughly twice as many court cases of domestic violence than DV incidents reported to police in Colorado (Table 67 and Table 71).
• The number of civil and criminal DV domestic violence and abuse cases increased from 62 per 10,000 citizens in 1998 to a high of 78 in 2003 and has since leveled off at an unsustainable level of ~72 (Table 57).
• The draconian police response mandated by the 1994 DV laws primarily acts to deter citizens from calling 911 (Table 55 and Table 56).
• The mandatory arrest law is a failure. As of 2004 arrest rates for domestic violence are indistinguishable from pre-1994 rates (Table 56) in Colorado Springs.
• Males have been the victim in 20-23% of the DV incidents reported to police in Colorado since 1999 (Table 67).
• Less than one half of the police incidents of "domestic" violence involve couples living together. By 2007 only 38% of DV incidents involved married or common-law couples (Table 69).
• The percentage of DV incidents involving married couples has fallen from 41-42% in 1995 to 31% in 2007 (Table 69) suggesting a corresponding decrease in the number of married couples in the general population linked to the passage of the 1994 domestic violence laws.
• The increase in restraining orders is inversely correlated with a steep decline in the marriage rate (Table 70). As of 2004 there are nearly as many restraining orders issued as marriage licenses in Colorado.
• False allegations and perjury are virtually never punished (Table 72). Subornation of perjury isn't even a crime in Colorado and the state Supreme Court recently ruled that a defendant cannot obtain any information from shelters or victim's advocates about what they instructed "victims" to do or say.
• There is no consistent correlation between other problems in the society, e.g., offenses such as theft, harassment, fraud, drug use, and underage alcohol use, and domestic violence in most judicial districts (Table 63).
• The finding by Dugan (2003, p. 299), and subsequent findings by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) that since 2001 only 0.4% of households suffer an incident of criminal domestic violence in a given year is about 30% less than the number of incidents reported to police in Colorado (Table 71). Conversely, court data do not correlate with either the police data or the NCVS estimates. In fact, court filings are consistently more than twice the NCVS estimates (Table 71).
• Violence against women in a domestic relationship, i.e., married or common law, is quite rare. CBI data show about 2,900 married women a year in all of Colorado are reportedly victims of "domestic" violence. With approximately 475,000 married women currently living in Colorado at most 0.6% are in any danger from domestic violence, and for about 80% of these cases the peril is limited to simple assault. However, the actual number of DV assaults of married women is much lower than 2,900. It is known that a substantial number of such incidents reported to police are false allegations.
Thus, current laws, police practices, and court policies neither deter offenders, protect victims, or fix the problem of family violence, but quite clearly deter citizens from calling 911 in a domestic disturbance (Table 56). These laws are clearly destroying the institution of marriage (Table 69 and Table 70) and our children.
It should be self evident that if a law is passed, and the problem appears to become worse, then the law is not the solution. The law and courts are, however, part of the problem today as available data clearly show.
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