Providing free or subsidized legal representation to victims, the report concludes, may reduce domestic violence and would be cost-effective as it would likely result in lower associated health care and legal costs.
“Not only are there rights- and moral-based reasons for support for domestic violence survivors, there are many economic reasons too,” said Denise Grab, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity and co-author of the report. “When we invest in education or infrastructure, no one sees a problem because the benefits of doing so clearly justify the cost. This may be the case for when we invest in services to support domestic violence survivors as well.”