Domestic Violence During a Global Pandemic: Lockdown Policies and Their Impacts Across Guatemala

• Author: Alex R. Piquero,Felicia O. Casanova,Laura Iesue
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862211044867
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862211044867

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2021, Vol. 37(4) 589 –614

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862211044867

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Article

Domestic Violence During a

Global Pandemic: Lockdown

Policies and Their Impacts

Across Guatemala

Laura Iesue1, Felicia O. Casanova1,

and Alex R. Piquero1,2

Abstract

This study uses official data from Guatemala’s Departamento de Atencion a la Victima

(Victim Attention Department), a specialized unit in Guatemala’s National Civil Police,

to assess the long-term impacts of a government mandated lockdown and reopening

on domestic violence. It also considers how the lockdown and reopening impacted

domestic violence across administrative departments in the country. Our findings

suggest that combined, daily cases of domestic violence were already decreasing prior

to the pandemic lockdown and that both the shutdown and the reopening altered the

patterning of domestic violence, first to increase domestic violence and then to decrease

it, respectively. When assessing this trend across departments, not every department

exhibited the same, national-level trend, but instead domestic violence trends varied.

This study provides a starting point in analyzing long-term pandemic-related policy

responses and their impacts on domestic violence in international contexts.

Keywords

Guatemala, domestic violence, COVID-19, interrupted time series analysis

Introduction

In March 2020, the World Health Organization [WHO] categorized the COVID-19

outbreak as a pandemic, resulting in government officials to implement restrictive

social distancing policies to reduce the spread of the virus (WHO, 2020). By April

1University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA

2Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Laura Iesue, Department of Sociology & Criminology, University of Miami, 5202 University Drive,

Merrick Building, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA.

Email: lti3@miami.edu

1044867CCJXXX10.1177/10439862211044867Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeIesue et al.

research-article2021

590 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 37(4)

2020, a third of the world was under some form of a lockdown (Bucholz, 2020;

Kaplan et al., 2020). Soon after, multiple organizations reported to the media that

they were experiencing an increase in the number of women seeking help for domes-

tic violence, compared to the same period in the previous year (Beggin, 2020;

Graham-Harrison et al., 2020; Taub, 2020). This pattern became so well documented

that the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, claimed that

the world was experiencing a “shadow pandemic” of violence against women and

girls (Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2020).

Latin America has not been immune to this “shadow pandemic.” Anecdotal reports

suggest that more than 1,200 women have potentially disappeared in Peru between

March 11th and June 30th of 2020 (Gilbert, 2020) and Brazil reported a 22% increase

in femicide in 2020 compared to 2019 (Bond, 2020). However, research on the rela-

tionship between COVID-19 and domestic violence within this region is still needed

as most of the research linking the pandemic and pandemic-related responses to

domestic violence has been predominantly conducted in the United States (cf. Evans

et al., 2020; Nix & Richards, 2021; Payne et al., 2020; Piquero et al., 2020), Canada

(Bucerius et al., 2021), within Australia (Payne et al., 2020; Pfitzner et al., 2020), and

more recently in places such as China (Dai et al., 2021). Unfortunately understanding

COVID-19 lockdowns and their impact on domestic violence has not been empirically

analyzed in countries across the Americas, such as Guatemala, where domestic vio-

lence continues to be a rampant criminal justice and health issue (Beltran & Freeman,

2007; Meeker et al., 2020; Minnick & O’Brien, 2018; Wands & Mirzoev, 2022).

There are several objectives for this study. First, we aim to move past the current,

anecdotal evidence of domestic violence during COVID-19 in Guatemala that was

highlighted in the media at the start of the lockdown. Pulling from the previous

research conducted in the United States (Evans et al., 2020; Nix & Richards, 2021;

Piquero et al., 2020), Australia (Payne et al., 2020), and other locations we empirically

consider whether government-mandated shutdowns affected domestic violence within

Guatemala. Second, we also seek to understand whether this trend is further impacted

by the reopening of Guatemala after the lockdown as much of the current research on

domestic-violence and COVID-19 only focus on the short term.

Third, we consider the impact of the lockdowns and subsequent reopening on

domestic violence across administrative departments. It is important to analyze such

potential variation across departments as policy analysis often document that less-

developed regions of Guatemala may choose to engage outside the criminal justice

system (OSAC, 2019). Furthermore, women in indigenous and rural communities may

underreport domestic violence as some areas of Guatemala continue to experience a

general fear and mistrust of the police due to prior police abuses that occurred during

the Civil War (Walsh & Menjívar, 2016).

This study asks two research questions: First, how do COVID-19 lockdowns and

subsequent reopening’s impact domestic violence? Second, how do these trends vary

based on the administrative department? Using data from Guatemala’s specialized

National Civil Police Unit (PNC), Departamento de Atencion a la Victima (Victim

Attention Department) collected between January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020,