The Australian Institute of Criminology's Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program operates across Australia surveying police detainees on their drug use and criminal behaviour. In the first quarter of 2003 and the third quarter of 2005 a total of 1,597 detainees (1,355 males and 242 females) in seven sites provided details of partner violence experienced and perpetrated over their lifetimes. A partner was defined as someone with whom the detainee had an intimate relationship, whether they lived with the person or not. Female detainees were more likely to report being both the victim (81%) and the perpetrator (51%) of a physical confrontation than male detainees (56% and 37%). Female detainees were also five times more likely to report that their spouse or partner had been arrested for a domestic violence related incident (39%), than were males (7%). Male detainees were more likely to report being arrested for such an incident (22%) than were female detainees (13%).
Lifetime experience of partner violence (percent) [see attached PDF for graph]
Further reading
- Mouzos J and Smith L 2007. Partner violence among a sample of police detainees.Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 337. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology