Call It Femicide: Legal Recognition, Victim Protection, and Domestic Violence(submitted)CEP Discussion Paper 2177
Can criminal law prevent domestic violence and change how victims use the state? We study Brazil’s 2015 recognition of femicide as qualified homicide using ten years of linked population, police, hospital, and prison records for 2.6 million women. Exploiting predetermined municipal exposure to men with histories of violence against women, we find that police-recorded non-fatal domestic violence fell disproportionately in more exposed areas. Conditional on an incident reaching police, requests for protective measures rose, while pursuit of charges did not. Legal recognition at the lethal endpoint can therefore affect both violence below that margin and survivors’ choice of state remedy.