9.5 The price of violence The case studies and lived experiences are starting to show how an acceptance of violence at any level leads to its normalization and decline into extreme violence across society, in and out of the family setting. The Inquiry has also started to highlight how a violation of an individual’s human rights will inevitably impact on the rights of those in the wider society. There is of course a moral and a cultural argument that family violence should be a public concern. On top of all of this there is the economic cost of family violence to consider. “For every death (due to violence) there are 10-40 times as many injuries severe enough to warrant medical attention. These consequences produce massive direct and indirect costs that can hinder economic development, increase socioeconomic inequality and erode human and social capital.” 72 World Health Organization A society in which family violence is allowed to flourish is a society whose economy is being constantly undermined. Family violence costs every single person in Samoa in a number of ways from the limiting of economic opportunities for those directly affected, to substantially damaging the overall economic development of the nation. The economic cost of family violence alone makes the matter one of great public concern. From an individual perspective, family violence has a variety of consequences in terms of productivity (which will also be viewed from a national perspective below). The Inquiry found a range of psychological and physical consequences of family violence which limit a person’s ability to work and provide for their family and the wider community. It is not simply the abused person who suffers the economic impact of the violence (from having to pay for their trips to the hospital to the loss of shared income), family violence can be debilitating on a family’s economic well-being. Inquiry Info Point 9: What types of cost to a national economy are generated by family violence? The costs related to family violence can be categorized as either ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’.73 Direct costs:  Police services  National Health Service  Prisons  Ministry of Justice, Courts and Administration  Judiciary 72 A Butchart, D Brown, A Khanh-Huynh, P Corso, N Florquin, R Muggah. (2008). Manual for estimating the economic costs of injuries due to interpersonal and self-directed violence. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/activities/economics/en/. Accessed 13 May 2018. 73 For a discussion on the definitions of indirect and direct costs see Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development. (2017). Samoa Family Safety Study. Document 46 in Inquiry anthology, accessible at www.ombudsman.gov.ws.