NCJ Number
141893
Journal
American Behavioral Scientist Volume: 36 Issue: 5 Dated: special issue (May/June 1993) Pages: 575-586
Date Published
1993
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Based on the 1981 Minneapolis police experiment, police departments across the country began to adopt either mandatory or presumptive arrest policies for domestic assault cases; more recent studies, however, indicate that arrest alone is not the only control strategy to deter wife assault.
Abstract
The quick and widespread adoption of mandatory or presumptive arrest policies was cheered by feminists and battered women's advocacy groups who often criticized police departments for being indifferent toward domestic violence or using inappropriate intervention strategies. Social scientists also approved of the change in police attitudes. A 1984 report of the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence called for police departments and criminal justice agencies to recognize family violence as criminal activity and to respond accordingly. This report also recommended arrest as the preferred strategy for responding to family violence. Despite the findings of the Minneapolis police experiment, more recent studies fail to support the notion that arrest alone deters violent husbands from future violence. Arrest should be part of global community intervention projects (CPI's). As system-level interventions designed to change the overall criminal approach to wife assault, CPI's are often staffed by battered women's advocates and include arrest in a total approach. Latent effects of control interventions on both victims and offenders are examined, and practical and policy implications of arrest research are discussed. 31 references and 2 notes