The fiscal year 2004 statistics for the Colorado courts for domestic violence charges, with associated mandatory restraining orders, are given in their Table 30, with a total of 15,255, and civil restraining orders are tabulated in their Table 29, totalling 14,060 (7,917 of these orders are for domestic abuse), for a combined total of 29,315, down 1,816 (–6%) from the previous year. These tables are compiled by the State Court Administrator's Office and are available from the Colorado State Court Web site and are combined and presented here in Table 47 with the normalized values for each judicial district.

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From 2002 on the State Court Administrator has broken the number of restraining orders issued into the separate categories of (a) domestic abuse and (b) all others. The number of restraining orders issued in each judicial district are shown in parentheses (number of domestic abuse orders) in Table 47. The values for judicial districts where more than half the restraining orders are for domestic abuse are shown in (bold). However, for consistency with data from previous years, it is necessary to use the total number of restraining orders for each judicial district and accept the inherent bias. The statewide average (minus Denver) is 73 per 10,000 citizens.

The number of restraining orders has increased over time, from 21,475 in 1998 (Table 36) to 29,315 in 2004 (Table 47), a 37% increase in just seven years while the sampled population has only increased 17%.

If restraining orders are being issued at the same ratio of 73 per 10,000 citizens in the entire United States as in Colorado there are approximately 2.1 million such orders being issued every year. That is a frightening number.

While the restraining order rate decreased 6% in 2004 from the 2003 high, this trend does not suggest the domestic violence problem is being solved, or offenders deterred, by current law and practice (see Table 51). Nor are the number of DV court cases supported by any other data. Domestic violence and abuse have clearly decreased in Colorado on a per capita basis from law enforcement data (Table 53).

The mean number of restraining orders for twenty-one of the twenty-two Colorado judicial districts for 2004 is 82 per 10,000 residents, with a standard deviation of 23 (Table 47).

In terms of the rate of restraining orders, the Third, Fourth, Tenth, Twelfth, and Sixteenth judicial districts once again lead the state for the year 2004 with 109, 109, 121, 114, and 125 restraining orders per 10,000 citizens respectively (Table 47). May god have pity on children and families in these draconian districts.

Percent of restraining orders versus percent of population

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A simple test of equity is the percentage of restraining orders issued in a judicial district versus the percentage of the population residing in that district. If uniform standards were being applied the percent of population would roughly equal the percent of restraining orders issued in that district. Any variance should diminish as the sample size increases. Thus large judicial districts like the Fourth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Twentieth should show smaller variances than small districts like the Third, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Twenty Second.

Allowing for differences in the populations of the judicial districts we still find in Table 47 that again in 2004 the Fourth Judicial District has issued an exceptionally high number of restraining orders (21.4% of total) relative to its percentage of the state population (14.3%) sampled.

Although small districts, the Third (0.9% of orders, 0.6% of population), Seventh (3.2% of orders, 2.3% of population) and Sixteenth (1.3% of orders, 0.8% of population) judicial districts consistently issue a much greater percentage of restraining orders than their populations would suggest.

While larger judicial districts, the Tenth (6.2% of orders, 3.7% of population) and the Nineteenth (6.4% of orders, 5.3% of population) also fall into this category.

These six judicial districts fail this simple test of equity.

Comparison of domestic violence and abuse with other misdemeanors in 2004

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Table 48 is a continuing attempt, for six years now, to see where and whether restraining orders and domestic violence correlate with other societal problems. The implicit assumption in Table 48, as in previous years, is that domestic violence is associated with other problems such as alcoholism, drug use, etc. For example, underage alcohol abuse and drug use would be associated with abusive or broken homes, and that Joe Six Pack likely gets into other kinds of trouble, e.g., bar brawls, for which he is arrested as well. In 2004 this assumption holds in the Third, Sixteenth, Twenty-First, and is especially notable in the Twelfth Judicial District (Table 48).

 

Table 48: Selected misdemeanor filings in the Colorado courts for fiscal year 2004. Number of filings per 10,000 citizens.

Judicial district Colorado Counties	2004 Census	Domestic Violence	Underage Alcohol Offenses	Drugs	Offense Against Persons 1	Offense Against Property 2	Fraud
First Gilpin and Jefferson	539,604 total	25	17	16	17	9	1
Second Denver (not included in totals)	556,835	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Third Huerfano and Las Animas	23,108 total	47	104	48	55	37	2
Fourth El Paso and Teller	576,251 total	58	22	27	24	14	2
Fifth Clear Creek, Eagle, Lake, Summit	88,189 total	47	35	38	33	20	3
Sixth Archuleta, La Plata, San Juan	58,658 total	46	14	29	18	11	0
Seventh Delta, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Montrose, Ouray, San Miguel	92,679 total	38	28	28	25	10	6
Eighth Jackson and Larimer	270,326 total	41	44	34	23	16	0
Ninth Garfield, Pitkin, Rio Blanco	69,274 total	50	36	24	35	10	1
Tenth Pueblo	150,171	56	24	9	27	17	0
Eleventh Chaffee, Custer, Fremont, Park	85,035 total	35	23	25	35	12	14
Twelfth Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Mineral, Rio Grande, Saguache	47,464 total	55	40	36	56	21	60
Thirteenth Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, and Yuma	78,311 total	37	21	27	25	9	3
Fourteenth Grand, Moffat, and Routt	47,733 total	48	66	53	32	22	7
Fifteenth Baca, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Prowers	21,657 total	32	47	20	23	14	45
Sixteenth Bent, Crowley, and Otero	30,701 total	65	60	21	43	29	4
Seventeenth Adams and Broomfield	432,758 total	33	6	9	14	10	0
Eighteenth Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert, Lincoln	789,009 total	21	23	12	13	9	0
Nineteenth Weld	219,257	51	12	14	18	10	5
Twentieth Boulder	278,917	28	61	26	21	26	0
Twenty first Mesa	127,253	57	90	60	27	24	1
Twenty second Dolores and Montezuma	26,583 total	36	48	26	40	14	17
Statewide average (minus Denver) Mean of 21 judicial districts Std. deviation of 21 judicial districts		38 43 12	28 39 25	21 28 13	21 29 12	13 16 8	3 8 15
County populations: U.S. Census Bureau Misdemeanors: Colorado State Court Table 30
Notes: 1. Offenses against persons includes the crimes of assault, child abuse, forgery, harassment, sex offenses, and menacing. 2. Offenses against property includes the crimes of arson, criminal mischief, and theft. 3. Values that differ from the state average for a given offense by one standard deviation or more are shown in bold.

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 The divorce rate then appears to be declining because there are fewer couples getting married. And in 2003 the marriage and restraining order rates appear to intersect although additional data, as always, are desirable.

Clearly, the implication is that as charges of domestic violence and abuse increase, the number of marriages declines. That finding agrees with common sense. Marriages are built on trust and a restraining order or DV allegation destroys any trust in one's partner.

There are, of course, many other factors contributing to the decline of marriage in today's society, e.g., the easy availability
of sex without getting married. Women also blame men, as usual, for having a fear of commitment. But it is a rare man today who has not been caught up in the nightmare of a divorce, allegations of domestic violence, a restraining order, or faced charges of sexual harassment; or at least has a close friend, co-worker, parent, sibling, or other relative who has been through the horror of our present "legal" system.

With the rate of restraining orders exceeding the marriage rate, does anyone think our society can long survive under these laws and practices?

 If unsupported allegations of domestic violence and abuse can be freely made in divorce and custody disputes with the law strongly favoring the female, then a man has to be functionally insane to marry and a drooling idiot to sire a child. By not marrying, and using modern birth control methods, our best and brightest largely avoid the nightmares our family laws and
courts have become. As a result, family laws in Colorado have become a breeding experiment in stupidity.

Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.
President, Equal Justice Foundation http://web.archive.org/web/20060222103958/http://www.ejfi.org/
455 Bear Creek Road
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906-5820
Telephone: (719) 520-1089
Domestic violence against men in Colorado: http://web.archive.org/web/20060222103958/http://www.dvmen.org/
Personal home page: http://web.archive.org/web/20060222103958/http://corry.ws/
Curriculum vitae: http://www.marquiswhoswho.net/charleselmocorry/Default.aspx

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