25 towns with the highest domestic violence rates in 2015
By Carla Astudillo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
There were 61,659 domestic violence offenses reported by police in 2015, according to a recent NJ State Police report. That’s about 6.8 incidents per 1,000 New Jersey resident.
It’s a slight decrease of one percent from the 62,055 that were reported the year before.
However, domestic violence murders spiked to a seven-year high of 49.
Domestic violence offenses also include assault and harassment which make up 43 percent of the incidents reported.
Domestic violence incidents as a precursor to homicide have received renewed attention lately. The man who shot Republican congressmen during a softball practice had a history of domestic violence.
Closer to home, a Roselle woman who was the victim of a murder-suicide last week had a restraining order against her killer.
Domestic violence offenses against women make up 74 percent of the total.
In addition, only 31 percent of domestic violence incident led to arrests. However, any arrest that happens after the initial domestic violence incident made by police is not counted in the total, according to NJ State Police spokesman.
The List
NJ Advance Media took the number of domestic violence and divided them by the 2014 estimated population provided in the report and came up with a domestic violence offense rate.
We accounted for the spike in population for Jersey shore towns during the summer months by dividing the number of offenses for those towns with the 2014 annual mean populations figures provided by NJ State Police.
Find out if your town is one of the 25 highest towns below. For our list, we excluded any towns with less than 5,000 permanent resident population. That’s why technically Buena borough with a population of about 4,557 is the town with the highest rate of domestic violence offenses but was not included in our list.