Domestic violence affects the victim. Domestic violence affects the children in the home. Domestic violence even affects the perpetrator. You were probably aware of this. After all, some of these affects are of course the legal issues you or someone you care about are now facing charges of assault with a domestic violence designation. What you may not be aware of is that domestic violence has negative effects over all of society.
One way that domestic violence affects society you can probably already guess. Many incidents are going to end up involving the police, the courts with all its personnel, hospitals and doctors, treatment facilities and perhaps even other services. Of course any time that these people need to give their services to deal with a domestic violence situation is less time they can be working on something else that would be just as needed. As all these services are among the most desperately needed by society you can see how in just this small way that domestic violence is harmful to society.
There is also, as mentioned above, the effects on the participants. It has been shown that domestic violence victims have much higher than normal tendencies to have physical problems like ulcers and heart problems, mental problems like depression and PTSD and social problems with relationships. Although not as much has been written on the topic it has also been shown that the effects on abusers mirror those which victims suffer from. In every incident of domestic violence there is a likelihood that it is creating two people who will struggle to fit in with society and some will no longer be able to be productive. Two people may not sound like enough to worry about, certainly not enough to affect society but realize that this is occurring in thousands of households.
Of course this problem is going to occur with the children. It has been shown that children who even just witness domestic violence struggle with school and are generally one and a half years behind their peers developmentally. Of course this is going to make the difficult work of the schools that much harder. It has also been shown that they are more prone to juvenile delinquency and quite often adult criminals. So domestic violence, which is a crime, may create just even more crime from the children who watch it. Saddest of all effects that it has on children is that many grow up to be abusers or victims themselves thereby continuing the cycle of the domestic violence problem and putting the strain right back on society.
The effect on the workplace and economy is also large. It has been proven that both abusers and victims struggle in the workplace. Sometimes they’re unreliable at work – they have trouble concentrating and little things get them angry, sometime aggressively so. In many cases they’re terminated for behavior that stemmed from the home environment. Of course this puts strain on the individual but also on the business. After all, they had to pay wages to an unreliable employee, now they’re short an employee and must go through the process of hiring and training a replacement.
Even more commonly there is an absentee-ism problem with many participants in domestic violence missing at least three days of work a month. This is quite often due to legal reasons. Remember what was said earlier about tying up the court’s time. This is even more often due to medical reasons whether physical or mental. The medical costs will likely be charged to insurance and this usually gets covered in part by most employers. Of course the more they have to pay out the less wages they are able to pay. It may not be easy to feel bad for a company but realize that the more businesses fail the less jobs are out there and the less money is being made. This is quite harmful to the whole national economy. Even if the businesses don’t fail remember what absentee-ism means. It may mean the termination of the employee. At the least it will mean less earnings. And of course any dollar not made is a dollar not spent and put back into the economy. So not only workplaces but also the national economy are put at risk when domestic violence occurs.
This shows one of the many reasons that Washington does inflict higher penalties when domestic violence is designated. If you or someone you care about is facing these charges you need to get your story out, get legal counsel and have your rights defended. You can get these needs met when you hire from the law office of Smith & White, PLLC for your Pierce County /Tacoma domestic violence defense attorney. Call today — the first consultation is free.