NCJ Number
175167
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Dated: December 1998 Pages: 395-415
Date Published
1998
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This is an ecological study of services provided to 392 battered women under a comprehensive domestic violence protocol.
Abstract
It focuses on microsystemic interactions between battered women and battered women's services and legal systems. The study examines the relationships between women's receipt of services from a battered women's agency, receipt of protective orders, and completion of the prosecution of batterers. The study also explores the associations between women's receipt of services and protective orders and their partners' subsequent arrests and police contacts. Researchers used open-ended interviews with battered women and with staff of the battered women's agency to expand and illustrate the quantitative data. The analysis shows that when a woman received battered women's services or had a protective order, a completed court case was more likely and number of arrests increased. These associations were strongest when women received both battered women's services and at least one protective order. More information is needed in order to determine whether the increase in police interventions found in this study was an indication of increased violence or an indication of women's increased willingness to call the police. The increased number of police interventions calls for further examination of studies that did not find deterrent effects of arrest and prosecution. In these studies, the partners of batterers who were arrested and prosecuted might have received counseling, advocacy services, or protective orders that obscured the effects of legal sanctions by increasing women's assertiveness in calling the police. 5 tables and 37 references