NCJ Number
114179
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 16 Issue: 4 Dated: (1988) Pages: 347-358
Date Published
1988
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Newspapers, magazines, and television news reports recently have presented features indicating that police departments throughout the United States have adopted arrest as the primary mode of intervention in cases of misdemeanor wife abuse.
Abstract
There have been several recent societal events that have motivated the police to move in that direction, the most significant of which may be the research results reported by Sherman and Berk. But those results are not convincing enough to a critical reviewer to provide the kind of anchoring one expects in a force motivating national change. That failure to convince stems from problems of external validity, aberrations that occurred in the execution of the research, questionable statistical interpretations, and a failure to consider a broad array of related social effects produced by the arrest process. 8 footnotes; 22 references. (Author abstract)