Correlates of Intimate Partner Stalking Precipitated Homicides in the United States
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Correlates of Intimate Partner Stalking Precipitated Homicides in the United States Abha Rai 1
&
Tatiana Villarreal-Otálora 1 & Julianne Blackburn 1 & Y. Joon Choi 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Intimate partner stalking is a significant health and safety concern in the United States, yet research on this phenomenon remains minimal. The purpose of this study is to examine the correlates of homicides precipitated by intimate partner stalking among a sample of homicide victims. This cross-sectional study included a subsample of adult homicide cases classified as intimate partner violence victims (N = 6028) between 2003 and 2015 on the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). The analysis explored victim- and suspect-related factors’ associations to homicide precipitated by intimate partner stalking. Bivariate associations were examined using Pearson’s correlation and Fisher’s exact test. Those meeting a significance threshold of .25 were included in the final analysis. Missingness was addressed with multiple imputation. The logistic regression analysis examined victim (marital status, education level, and geographic region of the homicide) and suspect (age, sex, firearm, and documented history of abuse towards victim) variables’ associations to homicide precipitated by intimate partner stalking. The findings suggest that the victim’s marital status, suspect’s sex, suspect’s use of a firearm, geographic region of the homicide, and a documented history of abuse of victim by the suspect had significant relationships with homicide precipitated by intimate partner stalking. The associations between death by firearm and previously documented history of abuse with homicide precipitated by intimate partner stalking have substantial implications for the criminal justice system. Limitations of the NVDRS dataset, recommendations for research, policy and prevention are discussed. Keywords Stalking precipitated homicides . Intimate partner violence . Correlates . NVDRS
In 2016, more than 22% of homicides in the United States (US) were carried out by an intimate partner (Ertl et al. 2019). The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ( 2015) classifies such deaths as intimate partner homicide or “incidents in which violence or the threat of violence by a person against his or her current or former intimate partner results in the violent death of one or more people” (p. 78). To understand this phenomenon, researchers have examined multiple correlates and possible risk factors (Campbell et al. 2007; Ertl et al. 2019; Spencer and Stith 2018; Spitzberg and Cupach 2007). Apart from the vastly examined correlates,
* Abha Rai [email protected] 1
School of Social Work, University of Georgia, 279 Williams Street, Athens, GA 30602, USA
such as intimate partner violence (IPV) and access to lethal means (Spencer and Stith 2018), the literature has identified stalking as a risk factor of intimate partner homicides (Campbell et al. 2007; Spitzberg and Cupac
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