DOES THE EXISTENCE OF A WOMEN’S POLICE STATION INCREASE THE COSTS OF COMMITTING AGGRESSION?

Aug 30, 2026

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Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes physical, sexual, and psychological aggression by a current or former intimate partner. Women’s decisions to report depend on their ability to sustain themselves and on whether external interventions are effective. The analysis uses 2010–2019 data from Brazil’s Notifiable Diseases Information System (SINAN) and a fixed-effect model to test how distance to women’s police stations (DEAM) shapes reporting incentives and outcomes.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryGeneral

FormatDOCX

Pages18

Reading Time6 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Background and context

Data and methods

Key results

Keywords

Introduction

Scale and impact of IPV in Brazil

Role and expansion of DEAMs

Barriers to reporting

DOES THE EXISTENCE OF A WOMEN’S POLICE STATION INCREASE THE COSTS OF COMMITTING AGGRESSION? Marco Túlio Aniceto França Júlia Sbroglio Rizzotto ABSTRACT: Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes physical, sexual, and psychological aggression by a current or former intimate partner. Women decide to report the violence not only when they can support themselves, but also when external interventions are effective. Thus, the distance to the women’s police station (DEAM) could reduce the incentives to commit aggression since the aggressor tends to be punished. For this analysis, data from the Notifiable Diseases Information System (SINAN) of the Ministry of Health for the period 2010 to 2019 were used and the methodology used was a fixed-effect model. The results show that the distance from the health unit to the nearest women's police station has a negative effect, that is, the further away from the police station, the fewer complaints women make. However, when we divide the municipalities into those who have DEAM and those who don’t we find that women who live in a municipality that has a DEAM report more than those who also live but need to travel 200km. Keywords: Domestic violence, women, police station, aggression, distance. JEL CODES: C23, J12, J18 RESUMO: A violência por parceiro íntimo (VPI) inclui agressão física, sexual e psicológica por um parceiro íntimo atual ou anterior. As mulheres decidem denunciar a violência não apenas quando podem se sustentar, mas também quando as intervenções externas são eficazes. Assim, a distância até a Delegacia da Mulher (DEAM) poderia reduzir os incentivos à agressão, uma vez que o agressor tende a ser punido. Para esta análise, foram utilizados dados do Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação (SINAN) do Ministério da Saúde para o período de 2010 a 2019 e a metodologia utilizada foi um modelo de efeito fixo. Os resultados mostram que a distância da unidade de saúde até a delegacia da mulher mais próxima tem efeito negativo, ou seja, quanto mais distante da delegacia, menos denúncias as mulheres fazem. Porém, quando dividimos os municípios entre os que têm DEAM e os que não têm descubro que as mulheres que moram em um município que tem DEAM relatam mais do que as que também moram, mas precisam percorrer 200km. Área 12 – Economia Social e Demografia Econômica INTRODUCTION Intimate partner violence (IPV) describes a current or former spouse's physical, sexual, and psychological aggression. One in three women has experienced physical and/or sexual partner violence, or sexual violence by a non-partner (Garcia-Moreno, 2013). Brazil is the 5th country with the most murders of women among 83 countries surveyed by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2005). In Brazil, immediate relatives (father, stepfather, son, and brother), partners, and ex-partners are responsible for 67.2% of the aggressions that women suffer (Waiselfisz, 2015). Violence against women impacts several aspects of their lives and reflects on physical and mental health problems (Coker et al., 2000; Breiding et a., 2008; Devries et al., 2011; Garcia-Moreno, 2013), on her children (Aizer, 2011; Neggers et al., 2004; Valladares et al., 2002; Garcia-Moreno, 2013; Rawlings and Siddique, 2018) on her productivity and her work histories (Leone et al., 2004; Riger, Raja & Camacho, 2002; Tolman & Rosen, 2001). Brazil is enacting measures to reduce IPV ranging from legislation to specific lines to report violence. In addition, other mechanisms were created to increase the number of reports and the safety of the victim, as they provide specialized care for cases of female violence: Delegacias Especializadas de Atendimento das Mulheres (Police Stations Specialized in Serving Women, DEAMs). Brazil pioneered the creation of women’s police stations designed to respond specifically to violence against women in Latin America in 1985 (Jubb et al., 2010). Since then, states have been implementing this mechanism and, in 2018, according to Brazi

FAQs

What does intimate partner violence include in this study?

It includes physical, sexual, and psychological aggression committed by a current or former intimate partner.

How do the authors measure the relationship between DEAM availability and reporting?

They use SINAN data for 2010 to 2019 and apply a fixed-effect model to examine the effect of distance to the nearest women’s police station on complaints.

What do the results indicate about distance to women’s police stations?

Distance has a negative effect: the farther women live from the DEAM, the fewer complaints are reported.

Aug 30, 2026

Upload by Rhys