NCJ Number
138488
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 83 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1992) Pages: 46-72
Date Published
1992
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article traces the history of police policies and procedures in responding to misdemeanor domestic assault from 1970 to 1990, along with court cases, legislation, and research that has affected these policies and procedures.
Abstract
In the 1970's and early 1980's, official police response to misdemeanor domestic assault was to discourage victims from making it a criminal justice issue. Police policy was to view domestic assault as a private marital problem to be addressed through marital counseling. Court action on behalf of domestic assault victims in the 1980's challenged police inaction in domestic assault cases as a failure to enforce the law against assault and to protect citizens. Successful court cases against the police led to State laws that require police to arrest batterers upon probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed or a restraining order violated. The deterrence effectiveness of such a policy was bolstered by a 1984 Minneapolis experiment that showed arrest to be more effective than a warning or removal of the perpetrator from the home in deterring future assaults. Six studies were later funded to determine whether arrest alone would have the deterrent effect it had in Minneapolis. The results of three of those studies, conducted in Omaha, Charlotte, and Milwaukee, indicated that arrest alone did not deter abusers. Although these three replications cast some doubt on whether arrest alone is an effective deterrent with all abusers, it does deter the vast majority of abusers. Research which fails to establish the uniform deterrence effectiveness of an arrest policy for domestic violence should not be used as a rationale for returning to police policies of the past. 236 footnotes