For years, the focus of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been ramping up the criminal justice response — more restraining orders, more arrests, more prosecutors, more incarcerations. But this approach does not address the underlying causes of domestic violence: alcohol abuse, marital discord, and childhood emotional trauma.

SAVE has published numerous Special Reports that document the numerous fallacies and flaws of our current approach to domestic violence: http://www.saveservices.org/reports/

Now, that message is sinking in. Recently the HuffPost published an article expressing deep reservations about VAWA’s strong focus on criminal justice measures: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-violence-against-women-act_n_5c7d4097e4b0614614dd02b8

The article quotes University of Maryland law professor Leigh Goodmark:

“No reliable social science data ties the drop in the rates of intimate partner violence to criminalization or to increases in [VAWA] funding. Crime has declined and the funding to address intimate partner violence has increased, but the problem persists.”

SAVE invites you to read the HuffPost article and let your senators know your views on the issue — call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.