National Census of Women Who Are Incarcerated for Offenses Stemming from Intimate Partner Violence

The Stanford Criminal Justice Center is leading a national research project to understand how people experiencing gender-based violence are criminalized for actions they took to survive abuse. While IPV exists for people of all genders, we are focused on women given their disproportionate rates of severe and lethal intimate partner abuse. We also are centering our research on people convicted of the most serious of offenses and serving the longest sentences––murder and manslaughter.

Our goal is to help guide policy discussions on charging, sentencing, prison programming, parole and reentry policies and decisions. The results may also inform laws regarding self-defense and other affirmative defenses, and strategies for addressing intimate partner violence.

In June 2023, the team released a new report, called Great Weight: A Review of California Board of Parole Hearing Transcripts to Assess Frequency and Consideration of Intimate Partner Violence among Women Convicted of Homicide Offenses. The report estimated how many women in California state prisons are incarcerated for homicide offenses that were directly linked to their experiences of intimate partner violence by reviewing California Board of Parole Hearings transcripts. The analysis also examined how these women fare during the parole process. The report includes results along with specific recommendations, and is available here.

In Summer 2024, the team released a new report, entitled Fatal Peril: Unheard Stories from the IPV-to-Prison Pipeline and Other Voices Touched by Violence, examining the prevalence of intimate partner violence among 649 people incarcerated for murder or manslaughter in California’s women’s prisons. The study represents the first time the Composite Abuse Scale and Danger Assessment, two validated instruments used to assess intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide, have been used on a prison population. In addition to quantitative results, the report presents qualitative data collected from 537 study respondents in which they share their experiences of abuse, the circumstances of the offenses, their experiences of the criminal legal system, and their feelings of regret, remorse and healing. The report is available here.