Violence Against Black Women in the United States

Introduction

• Black women in the United States face various threats to their safety, including physical violence from intimate partners, family members, and police officers, as well as stalking and sexual violence.
• Black girls are disproportionately disciplined and punished in schools, often being funneled into the criminal justice system instead of receiving resources and care as victims of sexual violence.
• Movements to end domestic violence and reform the criminal justice system have not adequately addressed the complexities of violence against Black women, particularly regarding how race, gender identity, sexuality, and class shape their experiences.
• This chapter examines different forms of violence against Black women, covering intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual violence, homicide, and police brutality, and also incarceration and school discipline because physical and sexual violence lead to involvement of Black girls and young women in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Intimate Partner Violence

• Domestic or intimate partner violence involves one person seeking to dominate and control another through psychological, sexual, economic, or physical abuse, perpetrated by current or former partners and spouses.
• Almost one-third of women 18 and older in the United States experience physical intimate partner violence during their lifetimes.
• Violence prevalence varies across racial and ethnic groups, where more than half of Native American and over four in ten Black women experience physical violence by an intimate partner, which is higher than White (30.5%), Hispanic (29.7%), and Asian/Pacific Islander women (15.3%).
• Besides physical violence, perpetrators use psychological, verbal, and economic abuse to control, monitor, or threaten partners.
• Black women experience substantially higher psychological aggression (53.8%) than women overall (47.1%).
• Domestic violence survivors often report missing work or school, needing medical care, legal services, or housing services.
• Survivors can lose substantial earnings and jobs due to the violence.
• Black women may experience exacerbated negative impacts of domestic violence due to unequal access to healthcare and vulnerability to poverty.

Sexual Violence

• Sexual violence harms Black women's health and well-being.
• Black women are more likely to experience rape than women overall during their lifetime: 21.2 percent compared to 19.3 percent of all women aged 18 and older.
• Women are most often raped by an acquaintance (46.7%) or intimate partner (45.4%).
• Black women are less likely to experience sexual violence other than rape than women overall (38.2% compared with 43.9%).

Stalking

• Stalking involves unwanted communication and being watched, "a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear".
• Most victims are stalked by someone they know, and nearly two-thirds of female victims are stalked by intimate partners.
• Black women have a lower prevalence of stalking victimization than White women, 13.9 percent and 15.9 percent, respectively.
• Stalking prevalence is highest among Native American women, with one in four stalked during her lifetime.

Homicide by Men

• Black women are at an especially high homicide risk by men.
• Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than White women.
• 92% of Black female victims were killed by men they knew, commonly in the course of an argument.
• 56% of Black female victims who knew their killers were killed by current or former intimate partners.
• Guns were the murder weapon in 59% of cases with identified weapons.
• Black female homicide victims' average age: 35 years old, five years younger than the 40-year-old average for all women.

Black Women and the Criminal Justice System

• Black women and girls who survive violence are criminalized through arrest, incarceration, and juvenile detention entry.
• Nearly 60% of female state prisoners and up to 94% of certain female prison populations have experienced physical or sexual abuse.
• 84% of girls in Florida's juvenile justice system experienced family violence, 41% experienced physical abuse, and 31% experienced sexual abuse in a study.
• Girls who survive physical and sexual abuse, particularly Black and Native American girls, are funneled into the juvenile justice system due to their victimization.
• Trauma linked to sexual abuse by girls is often worsened by involvement in the juvenile justice system, which leads to lifelong cycles of imprisonment and abuse.

Criminalization of Violence Survivors

• Adult Black women may enter the criminal justice system because of their exposure to violence.
• Mandatory arrest laws and pro-arrest policies have led to the criminalization of domestic violence survivors.
• Female arrest rates for domestic violence in 58 California counties increased by over 500% between 1987 and 2000 because of aggressive policing policies toward domestic violence, while male rates increased 136%.
• There was no increase in actual violence rates by women.
• Increased female domestic violence arrests may be because police officers don't accurately distinguish between aggressive and defensive behavior.
• Many women are arrested for defending their children against abusive partners causing defensive actions in victimization situations to be interpreted as aggressive for women of color.
• Low-income women may be at risk for arrest in domestic violence.
• 43% of domestic violence survivors arrested with their abusers or due to complaints by abusers in New York were living below the poverty line, and 66% were Black or Latina.

Disciplining Black Girls in Education

• Racial disparities occur in school discipline.
• Black girls were 45% of girls suspended and 42% of girls expelled from K-12 public schools from 2011-2012.
• Black girls compose larger proportions of girls suspended and expelled than Black boys.
• The disproportionate disciplining of Black girls is because of administrator bias.
• Black girls are more likely to be seen as "disruptive" or "loud" compared to other children.
• Black girls are likely to be punished for dress code violations, talking back to teachers, and "defiance" more than other groups of girls.
• Black girls with disabilities are even more suspended than other Black girls.
• Disproportionate suspensions and expulsions have long-term negative effects on these girls' educational outcomes because harsh school discipline policies and law enforcement contribute to their criminalization.
• From 2009-2010, Black girls were 17% of female students, but were 31% of girls referred to law enforcement and 43% of girls subjected to a school-related arrest.

Incarceration

• Women and girls of color are the fastest-growing U.S. prison populations.
• High incarceration is caused by "War on Drugs" policies, discriminatory school disciplinary procedures as the "school-to-prison pipeline," and other racial and gender biases within the criminal justice system.
• Black women of all ages were twice as likely to be imprisoned as White women as of 2014.
• Young Black women (aged 18-19) were four times more likely to be imprisoned than their White counterparts.
• 0.11% of Black female residents in the United States were serving one year in prison as of 2014, the highest proportion of any racial/ethnic group of women, and Black men had the highest among all gender and race groups at 2.72%.

The War on Drugs and Incarceration

• Ronald Reagan's 1982 declaration of the "War on Drugs" significantly increased incarceration numbers in the U.S.
• The War on Drugs promoted a racialized image of crime, drug dealing, and welfare dependency.
• The incarceration of women in the United States grew by 400%, and women of color grew by 800% from 1986 to the early 2000s.
• Nearly 25% of women in state prisons were incarcerated for drug-related offenses as of 2014, while it was only 15.1% for men.
• Black and Latina women are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug-related crimes than White women, even though drug use and selling occur at similar rates across racial and ethnic groups.

Low-Income Women and Incarceration

• Having a low income is associated with a greater incarceration risk.
• Incarcerated individuals had a median annual income 41% lower than non-incarcerated individuals of similar ages.
• Incarcerated Black women ages 27-42 had pre-incarceration incomes 47% lower than Black women of the same age who were not incarcerated.
• 72% of incarcerated women ages 27-42 had incomes of less than $22,500 annually before incarceration, compared with 48% of non-incarcerated women.
• The disproportionate incarceration of low-income Black women may be connected to a “criminalization of poverty" through the enactment of policies that equate public benefit receipt with criminality.
• Policymakers and law enforcement began equating public benefit receipt with criminality through cross-referencing social welfare and law enforcement records.

The Effects of Incarcerating Black Women

• Incarceration has long-term effects on Black women and their communities.
• Black women who were previously incarcerated are subject to policies that threaten economic stability and political participation.
• Employers in most states can deny jobs to individuals with a criminal record.
• Many states have legal prohibitions against employing ex-offenders in certain occupations such as pharmacists, police officers, and teachers.
• These barriers depress earnings of formerly incarcerated individuals.
• "Ban the box" legislation prevents employers from asking about conviction history questions on job applications.
• Many formerly incarcerated Black women are prevented from accessing crucial social safety net support.
• Federal law bans those with drug-related felony convictions from receiving TANF benefits for life.
• This policy is destructive to Black women and their families because Black women are disproportionately sentenced for drug-law violations, since 62% of women in state prisons and 56% of women in federal prisons reported being a parent of at least one child under 18 in 2004.
• State and federal legislation may impede formerly incarcerated individuals from securing student loans, accessing housing, voting, and maintaining child custody.
• Many women and girls report physical and mental health needs being left unmet in incarceration, with long-term negative effects on health and well-being and families also experience negative health impacts.

FOCUS ON: LGBTQ WOMEN

• Black LGBTQ individuals, especially those who are violence victims, face extreme law enforcement discrimination.
• Transgender and gender non-conforming women of color report high police harassment, physical assault, and sexual assault rates.
• 40% of girls in juvenile detention describe themselves as lesbian, bisexual, gender questioning/gender non-conforming, or transgender.

Racial Profiling & Police Brutality

• Racial profiling and police brutality are forms of violence related to the criminal justice system that affect Black women's lives, contributing to their disproportionate representation in prisons.
• Black women comprised over half (53.4%) of all women stopped by police vs only 13.4% of white women
• Rates of racial disparities in stops, frisks, and arrests were identical for Black men and women.
• 22.6% (about one in four) of women killed by police in 2015 were Black as they comprise only 13% of the female population in the United States.
• In many cases, police officers faced little to no repercussions after killing unarmed Black women
• In 2014 and 2015, police misconduct cases against women of color involved police not submitting sexual assault kits for testing, underreporting domestic violence crimes, and sexually assaulting non-White victims of crime.

Conclusion

• Domestic violence, law enforcement violence, and incarceration diminish the health, safety, and economic security and mobility of many Black women.
• Black women are at heightened risk of intimate partner violence and being killed by intimate partners and police compared to White women.
• Black women and girls who experience violence face an increased risk of criminal justice system entry.
• Better data collection on diversity of Black women's experiences of violence both inside and outside the criminal justice system is essential to elevating their experiences and needs.
• Criminal justice system reforms like modifying mandatory arrest and sentencing policies, addressing discriminatory and violent police practices, and removing barriers for previously incarcerated individuals are crucial to the well-being of Black women and their families.