Interpersonal Violence

Although the self-reported rate of interpersonal violence in 2004 was virtually unchanged from 2003, it was at the lowest level recorded since the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) began polling US residents in 1973. While the NCVS and Vital Statistics data together track homicide, physical assault, rape, sexual assault, and robbery trends, they fail to capture an estimated 90% of sexual assaults and also dramatically undercount domestic violence against elders, partners, and children. The continuous decline in violence rates since 1995 stems from a combination of a robust economy and growing social pressure to reduce youth, domestic, and sexual violence. A range of promising prevention efforts, both environmental and attitudinal, are being implemented and evaluated. Still, 9 million people, many of them children, are victims of personal crime annually, keeping this problem atop the list of societal ills.

PIRE's primary areas of violence research include domestic violence, counting and costing violence, understanding youth violence,, the return on investment in violence prevention, firearm violence, and extensive work on the role of alcohol and other drugs in violence, including the link between violence level and alcohol outlet density, and environmental approaches to preventing alcohol-involved violence. Several PIRE studies focus on high-risk youth, probing the nexus of violence and other problem behaviors.  Conceptually, impaired driving crashes also are violent crimes. PIRE has conducted extensive work on driving impaired by alcohol and other drugs.