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QUESTION: battered women's shelters and the decline of women killing their abusers (in the U.S.)?

Submitted by Anonymooose on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 12:52am
question / pregunta: 

Several months ago, a friend attended a training around domestic violence and sexual assault. She recently told me that one of the presenters had said that the rates of women killing their abusive spouses/partners dropped dramatically with the establishment of battered women's shelters in the United States. She said that the presenter did not state where he got this information. Where would i find studies/reports confirming (or disproving) this statement?

Answers

Answer posted by: jenna

It turns out the patron was really looking for a particular article, written by Angela Browne and published in Law & Society Review sometime in 1989. I found it for her by looking the title up in my library catalog. Once I determined which databases aggregated it (at Columbia there are several:

  • Full text available from Blackwell-Synergy 03/01/2003 to present
  • Full text available from Factiva 01/01/1998 to present
  • Full text available from HeinOnline Law Journal Library 1966 to 2002
  • Full text available from JSTOR 11/01/1966 to 12/31/2004
  • Full text available from LexisNexis Academic 01/01/1999 to present
  • Full text available from PAO Collection 2 1966 to 1995
  • Full text available from ProQuest Research Library 01/01/1997 to present
  • Full text available from Social Sciences Full Text 01/01/1995 to present
  • Full text available from Wilson OmniFile 01/01/1995 to present

Of the three that promised coverage from 1989 I selected JSTOR, which I then searched for [angela browne]. I then sorted the results from oldest to newest and identified

"Exploring the Effect of Resource Availability and the Likelihood of Female-Perpetrated Homicides," Angela Browne and Kirk R. Williams. Law & Society Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1989), pp. 75-94

as the article, downloaded it in pdf, and sent it to the patron. If anyone else wants it, let me know.