Influence of Criminology on Criminal Law: Evaluating Arrests for Misdemeanor Domestic Violence

• NCJ Number: 138487
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 83 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1992) Pages: 1-45
• Author(s): L W Sherman
• Date Published: 1992
• Length: 45 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This introduction lays the groundwork for the achievement of the following goals of this journal symposium on domestic violence: report the most comprehensive information available on the effects of arrest on misdemeanor domestic violence and explore the problems of using criminology to influence the criminal law, with the domestic violence arrest experiments as a case study.

Abstract

Starting with a review of the rationale for conducting controlled experiments in criminal sanctions, this symposium introduction shows why police policy on domestic violence was ripe for such an experiment in 1980. The Minneapolis experiment is then described in detail, including its policy recommendations against mandatory arrest laws and its relative influence on the passage of such laws. The Minneapolis experiment in police response to domestic violence used a lottery method that assigned approximately one-third of the probable-cause suspects to be arrested, one-third to be advised, and the rest to be sent away from the home on threat of arrest. Over a followup period of at least 6 months, approximately 10 percent of the arrested suspects and approximately 20 percent of the suspects not arrested were officially detected to have committed one or more repeated domestic assaults. Citing these results, the U.S. Attorney General 4 months later issued a report that recommended arrest as the standard police response for misdemeanor domestic assault. Within 2 years, preferred arrest became the most common urban police policy for such cases. By 1989 mandatory or preferred arrest policies were reported by 84 percent of urban police agencies. By late 1991, 15 States and the District of Columbia had passed mandatory arrest statutes for cases in which there was probable cause to believe that misdemeanor domestic violence had occurred. This introduction describes the five replication experiments, so as to account for their diverse results. This introduction concludes with an assessment of the teachings of the past decade on both symposium concerns: policing domestic violence more effectively and using experimental criminology more wisely. 2 tables and 139 footnotes