Protective Orders in Montevideo, Uruguay: Their Effectiveness to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence Revictimization Towards Women

Abstract

Introduction. Globally, protective orders are the most frequently used legal instrument to prevent intimate partner violence towards women (Herrera & Amor, 2017). Past research from the Global North has shown that the issuance of protective orders reduce women's revictimization considerably (Dowling et al., 2018b). However, little is known about their effects on women's wellbeing in Latin America. Objective. This article examines the effectiveness of protective orders to prevent intimate partner violence revictimization towards women in Montevideo, Uruguay. Methodology. Using police reports and court files of a probabilistic sample of 1.034 domestic violence cases among intimate partners, we conduct a quantitative analysis of: (i) protective orders infringement levels during the six months after its issuance; (ii) reported revictimization characteristics; and (iii) victim, author and reported case attributes that are empirically related to a higher risk of revictimization. Results. Our findings show that protective order infringement and violent infringement represent 33,6% and 25,9% respectively. Additionally, they indicate that protective orders successfully reduce incidents of physical, psychological, sexual and economic violence; but increase harassment. Conclusions. They also show that revictimization probability is statistically associated with: (i) Women´s prior experiences of intimate partner violence with other couples; (ii) author’s previous contact with the justice system; (iii) psychological violence incidents previous to that reported. This investigation hopes to contribute to the design of an empirically-oriented security policy, that allows the allocation of resources to protect those women that are in the most vulnerable situations to future partner violence.