Highly damaging criminal suspicion of men persists with little rational basis across a wide variety of public discourses. Consider claims of the form “domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women.” In the criminal shadow of such claims, without the need for explicit mention, are men — men as a stereotyped class of persons who commit violent crimes against persons most closely associated with them in love. Such claims have great significant for individuals’ lives and for the public allocation of resources. Such claims have been prevalent in public discourse for more than two decades. Nonetheless, under reasonable consideration of facts, such claims are clearly false.

Public discourse’s fundamental weakness with respect to such claims isn’t in the processing of facts, but rather in the processing of criminal suspicion of men. A Yale Law Review article entitled “‘The Rule of Love’: Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy” declared:

as this Article opens by observing, battering of women by husbands, ex-husbands, and lovers remains the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States today.^

Falsely claiming a greatly exaggerated scope for love’s failures supports a greatly expanded scope for punishment’s application. An article in the McGeorge Law Review used the false claim in identifying an epidemic of unreported crime:

Domestic violence is a national epidemic. It is “the leading cause of injury to women between 15 and 44 years of age in the U.S.–more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.” In fact, domestic violence “is believed to be the most common yet least reported crime in our nation.”^

An article in the Nevada Lawyer placed such a false claim squarely within the administration of the criminal justice system:

The City Attorney’s office vigorously prosecutes domestic violence cases and has a victim advocate on staff who helps prepare victims for the case. “Domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury to women,” she says, and her program’s goal is to break the cycle of violence.^

The state substitutes for interpersonal violence incarcerating, by physical force if necessary, persons in prison. The appeal in public discourse of that trade-off in violence dominates economic interests. Thus a DePaul Law Review article entitled “Mandatory Arrest Of Domestic Abusers: Panacea Or Perpetuation Of The Problem Of Abuse?” reasoned:

Domestic violence remains a leading cause of death and injury among women. In 1992, for example, injuries from domestic violence exceeded the combined number of injuries to women caused by auto accidents, rapes, and muggings during the year. Current estimates suggest that as many as six million women are the victims of domestic violence each year. … In light of the fact that domestic violence poses a greater threat to women than any other violent crime, and in consideration of the fact that this crime is the leading cause of injury among women, this trade-off regarding jail space should be mandated.^

If domestic violence really were the leading cause of injury to women, the amount of additional jail space required to incarcerate all the (implicitly male) domestic-violence perpetrators would greatly expand the U.S.’s world-leading system of mass incarceration. The cost of such jail space generates relatively little concern.

Incomparable aggregates and frightening comparators help to suppress better-quality public reasoning about domestic-violence claims. Consider the phrase “leading cause of death and injury among women.” Death is orders of magnitude less frequent than injury. Leading causes of death are much different from leading causes of injury. Domestic violence is far from the leading cause of death to women and far from the leading cause of injury to women. Nonetheless, claims that domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury to women occur in relatively high-quality fields of public discourse. For example, that claim occurs four times in Congressional records, including this instance:

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44.^

Similar claims aggregating death and injury also occur in eight law journal articles. The invocation of death is not plausibly related to serious statistical evaluation. The function of death seems to be to prompt fear, horror, and anger.

Frightening comparators similarly function to prompt fear, horror, and anger . Claims that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women are commonly extended with claims that injuries from domestic violence exceed injuries from other sources of harm. Frightening comparators that have been used include car accidents, muggings, rapes, occupational hazards, cancer deaths, heart attacks, strokes, and war. For example, a note in the Yale Law Journal advanced its argument with this statement:

The Senate Judiciary Committee, after reviewing a wide array of studies on violence against women in the United States, reported that “[v]iolence is the leading cause of injuries to women ages 15 to 44, more common than automobile accidents, muggings, and cancer deaths combined.”^

An article in the Harvard Women’s Law Journal advanced its argument with a similar claim:

In 1992, the United States Surgeon General Antonia Novello cited intimate violence as the leading cause of injury to women — more than car accidents, muggings, occupational hazards and cancer deaths combined.^

In conjunction with deploying frightening comparators, an article in the Yale Law and Policy Review more explicitly identified the male perpetrators:

In spite of an increasing number of legal reforms, the single largest cause of injury to women in the United States remains battering by husbands, ex-husbands, and lovers, who collectively inflict more injury upon women than car accidents, muggings, and rape combined.^

Car accidents and muggings are the most commonly used frightening comparators. In high-quality, nationally representative U.S. statistics on serious injuries, car accidents are the second-leading cause of injury. Muggings are a component of the fifth-leading cause of injury (assault other than sexual assault). By far the leading cause of injury to women ages 15 to 44 is unintentional falls. Unintentional falls do not occur as a comparator in any instance found that asserts as true the claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. A simple explanation is that unintentional falls aren’t commonly perceived as a frightening cause of injury. Unintentional falls also don’t cast a criminal shadow on (explicitly or implicitly male) perpetrators of harm.

Highly affective, false claims that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women don’t serve broad public interests. Respect for truth and respect for reason are fundamental public interests. Such claims do great violence to truth and reason. Some might judge that false claims about domestic violence against women are justified because they serve the laudable public purpose of raising public awareness about domestic violence against women. Domestic violence against women is an important public problem that needs to be publicly addressed. However, highly exaggerated claims of domestic violence against women support gender stereotypes that constrain public recognition of domestic violence against men. Scholars have argued bitterly for decades over the extent of domestic violence against men. Even if domestic violence factually affects a smaller share of men than women, that doesn’t justify promoting highly sex-biased public concern about domestic violence.

Strong anti-men bias in public concern about domestic violence relates through criminal suspicion to highly disproportionate imprisonment of men. Frightening, false claims about domestic violence against women show that public discourse favors criminal suspicion of men. Criminal suspicion of men in public discourse supports having many more men incarcerated than women incarcerated. That sex-biased communicative-penal process undermines the ideal of equal justice under law.

The sensationally false claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women is entrenched in the criminal justice system. Variants of that claim have been quoted in judicial opinions from high courts. Variants of that claim have appeared as statements of fact in law-review articles, including ones that judges have authored. Variants of that claim are not just a characteristic of elite discourse on domestic violence. Variants of the claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women have appeared throughout the criminal justice system, including on web pages of police departments, prosecuting attorneys, district attorneys, and attorneys general.

The absurdly false claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women typically occurs on criminal justice agencies’ web pages purporting to inform the public about domestic violence. Here are examples of that false claim from criminal justice agencies’ web pages early in 2006:

• FACT: …Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in our country, and the FBI estimates that a woman is beaten every 15 seconds. {Office of the District Attorney, 18^th Judicial District, Kansas, web page: “Myths and Facts About Domestic Violence”}
• Domestic violence is the single largest cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States, more than muggings, car accidents, and rapes combined. {St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, Saint Augustine, Florida, web page: “Domestic Violence”}
• Domestic violence is the single largest cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States. Each year, between 2 to 4 million women are battered, and 2,000 of those die of their injuries. {Walnut Creek Policy Department, Contra Costa County, California, web page: “Domestic Violence”}
• Battering is the single largest cause of injury to women in the U.S. It exceeds rapes, muggings, and auto accidents combined. {Bonham Police Department, Fannin County, Texas, web page: “Crime Prevention / Family Violence”}
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women. {Office of the Louisiana Attorney General, web page: “The Impact of Domestic Violence on the American Workplace is Significant}
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States. {Clark County Sheriff, Washington, web page: “Domestic Violence – Community Information”}
• {Domestic Violence} is the leading cause of injury and death to women between the ages of 15-44, exceeding car accidents, muggings and rapes. {Office of the District Attorney, Tulare County, California, web page: “Domestic Violence / Violence Against Women”}
• FACTS: …Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between ages 15 and 44 in the united States – more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991) {San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, California, web page: “Domestic Violence Myths and Facts”}
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between ages 15 and 44 in the United States – more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. (Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation,1991) {Eaton County, Michigan, Prosecuting Attorney, web page of the “domestic violence specialist,” section entitled “Did you know…?”}
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States; more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. {Prosecuting Attorney, Clark County, Indiana, web page: “Domestic Violence: Fast Facts on Domestic Violence”}
• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury for women age 15 to 44. More women are injured from domestic violence than {sic} rape, muggings and auto crashes combined. {Milwaukee County District Attorney, Wisconsin, web pdf document: “Domestic Violence”, section “Did You Know…?”}

The false claim about domestic violence has been used directly to prejudice jurors. About 2004, the Co-Director of the University of Texas School of Law Domestic Violence Clinic prepared teaching material entitled, “Voire Dire in Domestic Violence Cases.” That teaching material was adapted from materials by the City Attorney, San Diego, California and an Assistant Criminal District Attorney, Dallas, Texas. Among the questions for jurors being screened for hearing domestic violence cases:

With domestic violence as the number one cause of injury to women in this country, how many of you disagree with the state’s decision to press charges even if the victim does not want them to?^

According to the Internet Archive, that prejudicial teaching material on questioning jurors was being distributed on the National Center on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault’s website from at least 2007 to 2012.

The wildly false claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of injuries to women has proliferated within the criminal justice system. That communicative effect should be deeply troubling to persons concerned for public communication and justice. Persons criminally injuring those that they claim to love is a horrifying reality. Grotesque exaggeration of that horrifying reality indicates poorly functioning public reason and points to sex-biased administration of justice.

Criminal justice agencies have financial interests in domestic violence policy. From 1995 to 2005, the U.S. Congress appropriated $4.3 billion under the Violence Against Women Act to programs addressing violence against women. To receive federal money under the Violence Against Women Act, agencies needed to establish programs showing that they were treating domestic violence as a serious violation of criminal law. Agencies also had to “demonstrate that their laws, policies, or practices and their training programs discourage dual arrests of offender and victim” and “prohibit issuance of mutual restraining orders of protection.” Iin the specific context of an act explicitly directed at domestic violence against women, such policies implicitly identify men as the domestic-violence offenders. Criminal justice agencies have made exaggerated claims about the extent of domestic violence against women. At the level of narrow programmatic financial interests, such claims probably indicate criminal justice agencies attempting to show that they treat domestic violence (against women) as a serious violation of criminal law in order to get federal money under the Violence Against Women Act. Such public claims have the more general public effect of supporting highly disproportionate imprisonment of men.

Policy analysts and scholars have career interests in domestic violence policy. Much of the study of domestic violence is by persons who have specialized in that field and closely related fields. For more than a decade, persons studying domestic violence have viciously attacked each other. Academics typically form scholarly tribes and seek to achieve tribal control of particular scholarly journals to ratify their scholarly expertise. That’s a reasonable reading of the context for journals such as Violence Against Women.

Persons claiming expertise in domestic violence have made the further step of seeking national legislation. A law professor nationally recognized as an expert on battered women has proposed a “battered woman expert statute.” The proposed statute:

would require that anyone testifying on battered women syndrome, battered woman’s experiences, domestic violence, actually have some expertise in the area, be familiar with the literature on domestic violence and its effects on victims as well as the literature on abusers and actively engaged in domestic violence issues through teaching, writing or research.^

Such an initiative highlights both conflicting claims to expertise in domestic violence and career interests in such claims of expertise. Given prevalent gender-profiling men as domestic violence offenders and lack of services for men victims of domestic violence, anti-men domestic violence experts have exerted astonishing power and control over authority on domestic violence.

Unraveling the web of financial interests and conflicting claims to expertise in domestic violence isn’t necessary to recognize highly damaging failures of domestic violence authority. Claims that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women are grotesquely false. Acutely sex-biased concern about domestic violence is sexist. Responding to economic incentives is normal behavior, including for government agencies. Battling over expertise is typical for persons seeking to establish or preserve claims to expertise. Such behavior usually occurs within broad constraints of not appearing ridiculous under public reason, not fundamentally assailing the equal human dignity of a class of persons, and not undermining basic public trust in the fair administration of justice. Such deliberative constraints appear to have little effect on public discourse about domestic violence against women. That deliberative failure is central to the rise of extraordinary U.S. mass incarceration.