This report examines the rate and response to intimate partner violence in 33 RCMP jurisdictions in
British Columbia (BC) between January and December 2016, with an analysis of trends between
2011 – 2015 . Several lines of inquiry were considered to better understand intimate partner
violence. In particular, the contextual variances that differentiate not just one municipality from
other, but also the different neighbourhoods within the same municipality, which vary significantly
in terms of their levels of crime, was the focus on this study. In effect, to discuss intimate partner
violence in a city as a whole may mask important variations across communities and
neighbourhoods. Given what research has found in other cities, it is possible that the effects of
socio-demographic and socio-economic factors vary more within cities than between cities. Given
this, the focus of this report includes a) how several municipalities in each RCMP District compare
to each other in terms of their rate, distribution, and response to intimate partner violence, and b)
identifying the “neighbourhood effects” that also contribute to fluctuations in intimate partner
violence within single municipalities. The overall purpose of this report is to examine intimate
partner violence in RCMP jurisdictions and to provide a theoretical and empirical-based assessment
of the socio-economic and socio-demographic variables that contribute to intimate partner
violence.
