Essay --

Family is known to be the foundation of society, but family can also be a source of anger, grief and duplicity and animosity; cohabitation and dating relationships can also be a source of grief. No one should live in fear of the person they love, however, when love becomes interwoven with violence, the dynamic of the relationship changes. The relationship atmosphere becomes less powerful, incapable of providing support and a nurturing environment as it becomes a vehicle for personal destruction and despair. Intimate partner violence was consider at one point to be a private matter, however, it is now a public concern. In fact, people involvement in a single case of IPV-physical, sexual and psychological abuse-includes mental health and legal professionals and community members (Witte, Schroeder and Lohr, 2006). Texas defines domestic violence as â€Å"an act by a member of a family or household against another member of the family or household that is intended to result in physical harm, bodily injury, assault or sexual assault or that is a threat the reasonably places the member in fear of imminent physical harm, bodily injury, assault or sexual assault, but does not included defensive measures to protect oneself† (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2013). Domestic violence (DV), also known as intimate partner violence (IPV), spousal abuse or battering, is a widespread problem across the medical, social, and public health arena Houry, Feldhaus, Perry, Abbott, Lowenstein, Al-Bataa-De-Montero, and Levine (2004). Health-related costs of physical assault, marital rape, stalking, and homicide by intimate partners exceed $5.8 billion yearly, which is nearly $4.1 billion of which goes to direct medical and mental health services (Fantuzz... ...clusion, domestic violence registry does not guarantee accountability because not all domestic violence cases are reported. Thus, abusers are not convicted, therefore, would not be included in the registry. Since not all domestic violence cases are reported or convicted, that would make the registry incomplete, thus providing a false sense of security if a spouse’s, boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s name is not on the list. However, HB 21 could be extended into jurisdiction database. This way it can protect victim by ensuring that survivor’s do not have to live in fear worrying that their partners’ will come after them. The database should not allow the offender to upgrade their information but the system should be in the way as a parole officer is to their parolee whereby, only the officers of the law can access the database to make changes in an offenders’ information.