BANGOR — Every year, 23 to 29 people are murdered in Maine. Half of the state’s homicides are “nothing more than domestic violence cases to the most extreme example,” Attorney General Andrew Ketterer said Monday.

Stopping in at Spruce Run, a local shelter and service center for victims of domestic violence and their children, Ketterer urged heightened public awareness of the crime of domestic violence, which he termed “a civil rights violation.”

“Women have the right to live in their homes, to go about their daily lives without fear,” Ketterer said at a press conference attended by 10 other officials familiar with domestic violence issues.

En route to a prosecutors conference in Bar Harbor, Ketterer briefly mentioned funding issues connected to domestic violence.

Yet Francine Stark, Spruce Run’s community response coordinator, virtually sounded an alarm about the increased demands on services with no increase in state or federal funding to support them.

One in four Maine women — about 60,000 people — are victims of domestic violence, Stark said. Ten shelters statewide served 12,000 people last year.

One-fourth of the time and resources of Spruce Run is spent on training area agencies about domestic violence, Stark said, yet Spruce Run’s budget remains stagnant at around $360,000 a year. The agency has a much heavier workload with the same size staff it had 10 years ago, Stark said.

Stark also labeled a “tragedy in the making” the federal government’s sharp cuts to Pine Tree Legal Assistance, virtually assuring no attorneys and no power for impoverished women seeking protection-from-abuse orders or divorces from violent men, or for women seeking custody of their children.

Joined by 10 other officials at a Monday press conference — including Penobscot County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy, Ketterer advocated for increased education, sensitivity and support for victims of domestic violence.

He praised several national movements, including one that resulted in a law prohibiting handgun use by people convicted of domestic violence charges.

Ketterer praised the local district attorney and the Greater Bangor Area Task Force Against Domestic Abuse for their responsiveness to domestic violence issues.

Almy’s office is applying for a grant of more than $110,000 to strengthen its handling of domestic violence cases.

The Bangor Police Department has received a grant of more than $40,000 to hire someone whose time will be devoted entirely to domestic violence matters.

On Monday, Ketterer traced an outline of his hand and signed a poster at Spruce Run. “Hands Are Not For Hurting,” the poster stated.