Controlling Domestic Violence: Victim Resources and Police Intervention (From Out of the Darkness: Contemporary Perspectives on Family Violence, P 235-254, 1997, Glenda K. Kantor, Jana L. Jasinski, eds. - See NCJ-171756)

• NCJ Number: 171770
• Author(s): J L Miller; A C Krull
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 20 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examines how domestic violence victims in three cities use personal and police resources to control the violence directed against them by their partners.

Abstract

The study analyzed victim-reported behaviors, perceptions, and experiences in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Omaha, Nebraska. The victim's marital status, employment, and family influence her ability to control revictimization and social structural explanations of domestic violence account for differences observed across cities. Police intervention influences victim perceptions and recidivistic domestic violence. The victim is likely to feel better about herself and her ability to protect herself following police intervention. Police intervention can influence what the victim experiences after the police leave the scene. It also appears that police intervention, at the aggregate level, can escalate violence. The study proposes that future research attempt to document, at an urban level of analysis, a social structural explanation for variation in domestic violence and recidivistic violence across cities. Such research would be focused on sociodemographic profiles, socioeconomic status, race and ethnic composition, and employment and occupational factors. Notes, tables, references