This chart is from the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families in Santa Fe. It shows the dramatic increase in the number of domestic violence victims, both adults and children, they tended to last year, as well as a slight increase in the number of offenders who got some form of counseling through the shelter.
The shelter's figures don't give a complete picture, however. Police statistics provided by Santa Fe Domestic & Sexual Violence Liaison Carol Horwitz show fewer 911 calls, but more arrests.
Those stats, and more, after the cut.
more
It's difficult to fit these numbers into a larger trend, but there's little reason to suspect the piles of anecdotal evidence—not just from advocates, but from police, prosecutors and judges—regarding a spike in the severity of violence.
***
A bill to ban convicted wife-beaters from becoming police officers, covered in this week's SFR, was kicked back to a committee it had already passed, instead of moving forward with a floor vote in the New Mexico House of Representatives. The New Mexico Independent should be following today's hearing on the bill on its liveblog.
***
Finally, the following
recruitment plea
comes from
Santa Fe Court Watch
project director Jenna Yañez. (SFR reported on the program
, before it launched.)
