Stay Home, Stay Safe? Short- and Long-term Consequences of COVID-19 Restrictions on Domestic Violence in the Netherlands

Purpose: This chapter provides an overview of the results so far within the Stay Home, Stay Safe research project in the Netherlands. The project started in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and is aimed at examining short- and long-term consequences of restrictions taken to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus on domestic violence (DV). Restrictions may have resulted in social isolation and familial stress, which in turn may have led to an increase in DV. The main research question is whether, and if so which types of, DV increased during periods of COVID-19 restrictions.

Methodology/approach: This project used national data on DV before (2019) and during the different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2022), from different sources (i.e., official registered reports, advices as well as file data of DV agencies). Trends in the prevalence, nature, and the role of reporters of DV before the pandemic are compared to trends during the pandemic.

Findings: Trends of DV registrations show no differences in the prevalence before and during different phases of the pandemic. The number of advice requests at the reporting agencies seem to have increased. However, this finding cannot be unambiguously subscribed to pandemic-specific circumstances, because this upward trend already consistently started in 2019. A shift was observed from professional reporters toward relatively more non-professional reporters, mostly neighbors.

Originality/Value: In contrast to previously published research, the current project uses data from multiple sources and examines information not only on trends in prevalence of DV records, but also on the type of reporter, and the nature of the violence.