If you get all
the facts, your judgment can be right;
if you don't get all the facts, it
can't be right. - Bernard M. Baruch
The first federal appropriations for
VAWA I (1995-2000) was $1.8 billion.
At the end of VAWA I Senator Joseph
Biden claimed that, "…we have
successfully begun to change attitudes,
perceptions, and behavior related
to violence against women." The
Biden report also claimed that, "Five
years after the Violence Against Women
Act become law, it is demonstrably
true that the state of affairs that
existed before its enactment has changed
for the better."
Of course the fine print reveals that
even the proponents of VAWA I admit
that "…there is little to no
empirical evidence measuring the effectiveness
of VAWA I is available…" Would
the lack of any clearly definable
progress
be of concern the Congress concerning
VAWA II?
Hardly! When VAWA II (2000 – 2005)
was introduced to Congress it received
tremendous support. Apparently being
able to actually prove that a program
is effective or not, matter not to
most of the members of Congress. VAWA
II was authorized $3.3 billion for
fiscal years 2000 – 2005).
Perhaps after being unable to document
that the $1.8 billion was effective,
most concerned Americas would hope
that after $3.3 billion was spend
someone, somewhere, might be able
to document that, after a total of
5.1 billion, VAWA is effective. However,
after ten years the overall effectiveness
of the VAWA remains difficult if not
impossible to measure. There were
two studies that at least attempted
to measure the effectiveness of VAWA,
however, neither provided any documentation
regarding the overall effectiveness
of VAWA.
Advise Ignored
Congress mandated, as a part of VAWA,
that the National Academy of Sciences
through its National Research Council
(NRC) develop a research agenda to
increase the understanding and control
of violence against women. In 2004,
the NRC report, Advancing the Federal
Research Agenda on Violence Against
Women, advises Congress that:
At this point we have no evidence
that a separate theory is needed to
explain violence by intimates and
no reason to expect that the closeness
(or distance) of the relationship
between victims and offender sets
the conditions for theoretical predictions
of violent offending (
<http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.html>
p. 14)
And on page 100 in the concluding
paragraph NRC advises Congress that:
Finally, there is emerging and credible
evidence that the general origins
and behavioral patterns of various
forms of violence, such as male violence
against women and men and females
violence against men and women, may
be similar.
This appears to be just the kind of
advice that Congress did not want
to hear. There plan appears to be
to continue spending billions on VAWA
III regardless of know which policies
work and which ones do not.
The Senators did not have anyone from
the NRC appear before them at the
VAWA hearings. Perhaps because the
Senators were not interested in plausible
theories and scientific evidence concerning
cause and consequences and lack of
effectiveness with the policies and
programs the previous two VAWA authorizations
funded.
The Senators ignored listening to
any of the NRC steering committee
for the workshop on issues in research
on violence against women members.
In fact the Senators did not listen
anyone on the 2002-2003 NRC Committee
on Law and Justice.
It appears that at the Senate hearing
for VAWA III the Senators simply satisfied
themselves with listening only to
people who are driven by ideology
and who have stakeholder fiduciary
interest in having VAWA reauthorized.
The majority of the Senators did not
ask the NRC for its advice, data and
statistics because they knew they
would get answers they did not want
to hear. Rather they wanted to listen
only to advice, data and statistics
they would provide them with results
that fortified their preconceived
answers for their failed old solutions.
While the numbers of almost all types
of homicide victims – family, acquaintance
and stranger, have dropped dramatically
since 1976, the number of white women
who are killed by their intimate partners
has not changed
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/ipv.htm>.
Not being able to change that number
of homicides does not demonstrate
much of a return on the billions spent
to date on the Violence Against Women
Act. Is there not one member of the
media nationwide that is willing to
ask why the Senators why they ignored
the NRC and allowed the stakeholder
ideology to trump plausible scientific
experts when lives are at stake?
---
Richard L. Davis is the author of
Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies
and the VP of
<http://www.familynonviolence.org/>
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