In New York City, rates of felony domestic violence are stubbornly high even as other major crimes fall. The numbers tell a troubling reality.
Nearly 60% of intimate partner homicides between 2014 and 2023 involved victims and people who had no prior contact with police. At the same time, about one in five people accused of domestic violence last year had at least one related complaint already on their criminal record.
These statistics paint a dual picture: domestic violence can erupt suddenly in households with no warning signs, and it can also persist in cycles of repeated harm. Both patterns underscore how urgent — and how complicated — the challenge is.
These numbers leave us with many questions as we mark October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month. What kind of person causes harm in a relationship? Why do people cause harm to those they claim to love the most? Is someone capable of changing their behavior after they’ve committed harm?
Despite decades of advocacy and the passage of landmark protections such as the Violence Against Women Act, our current approaches are not reducing violence at the scale survivors and families need. Too often, the system responds only after harm has already been done. If we are to reduce domestic violence, we must invest in prevention and accountability for those who cause harm — because that is what survivors have consistently asked for: not only safety, but for their abusers to break the cycle.
The difficult truth is this: supporting survivors is essential, but it is not enough on its own. Lasting change requires working with the individuals who cause harm, too.
That’s why New York has made one of the largest investments in free, voluntary programming for people who have caused harm. The Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence works in partnership with community-based organizations — including the Urban Resource Institute, RISE Project, and Rising Ground — to offer Abusive Partner Intervention Programs known as Respect First and Respect and Responsibility.
These trauma-informed accountability programs are based on a simple but powerful idea: hurt people can hurt people — and with the right support, they can change.
Moreover, where these programs are housed — within organizations that understand the complexities of abuse and are structured to holistically meet the needs of survivors and their families — is critical to their success.
URI, one key partner in this programming, is the largest provider of domestic violence shelter services in America, serving more than 40,000 individuals each year. Together, we see domestic violence for what it is: a sprawling social justice challenge that’s too often only addressed after a high-profile tragedy or a high-profile celebrity or athlete is outed as an abusive partner.
Since 2022, more than 225 adult New Yorkers have participated in Respect and Responsibility, a free, voluntary program for adults who want to stop causing harm in relationships. And building on the success of that program, this January, the Adams administration launched Respect First, a voluntary or court-mandated program for youth between the ages of 13 and 21. Since January of this year, about 30 young people in Brooklyn and the Bronx have participated in Respect First, and this fall, it will expand to Staten Island.
Trained providers work with participants to recognize their own trauma and understand how that history may inform their decisions, to manage stress differently, and to build healthier relationships with the people they love.
One participant described a particularly meaningful accountability exercise: writing and reading aloud a letter to the person they had harmed. “It’s not easy to admit when you’re wrong. It’s not easy to apologize when you’ve done wrong,” the participant said. “To this day, I still think about that letter.”
Others report actively working to change harmful behaviors. “The first thing I was taught through this program was to pay attention to my stresses. Certain things I didn’t even know were stress points for me until it was pointed out,” another participant said. “Now I know how to count down when I know I’m going to have a breakdown — whether it’s mental, physical, or emotional.”
With prevention, accountability, and real opportunities to change, we can break the cycles of violence and trauma that plague our communities. We can empower people to change, we can protect survivors, and we can make a meaningful reduction in domestic violence rates in our lifetime.
To register or refer a client for these programs, head to nyc.gov/respect.
Sethi is commissioner of the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence. Schuster is vice president of government affairs at the Urban Resource Institute.
