Commentary on Websdale: lethality assessment approaches: reflections on their use and ways forward.

As we go into the 21st century, we can look at the past 30 years of domestic violence advocacy and research and remark proudly on how far we have come. The accumulated scientific knowledge, practitioner wisdom, policy changes, and public opinion changes are all remarkable (Klein, Campbell, Soler, & Ghez, 1997). What is even more exciting is that it looks like all that work has achieved at least partially the goal of decreasing, if certainly not yet ending, domestic violence. At the very least, we have definitely decreased the number and rate of intimate partner (IP) homicide of both men and women since 1976. However, one of the ironies in the field is that the rates of IP homicide have decreased much more for men than for women. The studies that have examined the decrease have found that a significant proportion of the decrease is attributable to increases in domestic violence resources such as hotlines and shelters and improvement in domestic violence laws (Browne, Williams, & Dutton, 1998; Dugan, Nagin, & Rosenfeld, 1999, 2003). It is also important to note in this era of marriage promotion as a solution for domestic violence that divorce availability was also associated with the decline in IP homicide in the Dugan et al. (1999) multivariate analysis. Even with IP homicide decreasing and progress apparent, every life that is lost from domestic violence is far too many and haunts all of us. Fatality reviews have increased exponentially as one way to identify ways the system can be improved to prevent these deaths. Another strategy is the development of lethality risk assessment instruments and systems. Barbara Hart (1988) led the