This article reviews recent scholarship around the issue of nonfatal strangulation in cases of domestic violence. In the mid-1990s, the San Diego City Attorney's Office began a systematic study of attempted strangulation among 300 domestic violence cases, becoming one of the first systematic research studies to specifically examine the prevalence of attempted strangulation as a form of injury associated with ongoing domestic violence. Prior to this time, most of the research into strangulation was conducted postmortem, and little was known about the injuries and signs of attempted strangulation among surviving victims. This article reviews the research that has since been conducted around strangulation in domestic violence cases, highlighting topics that are more or less developed in the areas of criminology, forensic science, law, and medicine, and makes recommendations for future research and practice.

Efforts to partner researchers and practitioners have the potential to significantly improve both research and response to non-fatal strangulation within the context of domestic violence. Non-fatal strangulation is far more common than most formal data suggest and is a highly gendered form of domestic assault often used to control or intimidate a partner; however, depending on how the assault takes place, it can leave little obvious physical evidence to an untrained investigator. The present study estimates the occurrence of strangulation cases and possible strangulation cases that may not be explicitly classified as such in official police reports due to inadequacies in law enforcement training. We offer a description of these types of cases as they compare with domestic violence police reports from non-strangulation cases. Results highlight the gendered nature of strangulation as well as the importance of practitioners and researchers critically reflecting on issues within the criminal justice system in an effort to redress inadequacies, hold offenders accountable, and save lives.

Research on intimate partner homicide has increased along with public awareness and policy responses toward domestic violence. The current study addresses the decline in gender-specific intimate partner homicides during a time marked by significant transformations in domestic violence legislation, including the enactment of the 1994 Violence Against Women's Act. In an attempt to account for changes in intimate partner homicide during this time period, we examine the exposure reducing potential of domesticity, domestic violence resources, and females' economic status, while also acknowledging their possible backlash/retaliation effects when accounting for inequalities in the economic statuses of males and females. By incorporating a pooled time-series design to model change, our research reveals changes between 1990 and 2000 in key theoretical predictors of domesticity, domestic violence resources, and economic deprivation significantly influence the trends in male-victim intimate partner homicide, but not female-victim intimate partner homicide for a large sample of 178 urban cities.

Assessments of the relationship between gender equality and gendered homicide have led to the development of two primary literatures: the first exploring backlash and amelioration effects, and the second examining the influence of exposure reduction. In addition, a third body of research has examined differences in intimate partner homicide (IPH) between rural and non-rural places. The current study contributes to these three literatures by exploring the relationship between gender equality and female-victim IPH in the context of backlash, amelioration, and exposure reduction while considering the influence of rurality. Results indicate the relevance of rurality to research on the relationship between gender equality and female-victim IPH.

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