Family Justice Center

Title Mandatory Arrest for Domestic Violence - A Universal Solution?

Author Vernellia R. Randall, Esq.

Synopsis Article discussing mandatory arrest policies

Description excerpted from, Barbara Fedders, Lobbying for Mandatory-arrest Policies: Race, Class, and the Politics Of the Battered Women's Movement, 23 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 281, 291-296 (1997)(89 footnotes)
Battered women's advocates rest their support for mandatory arrest on the deterrence of batterers and empowerment of women they believe the policy can achieve. Subsequent criminological studies, however, suggest that any beneficial effects produced by mandatory arrest may not be universal across race and class.
To test the validity of the results of the 1984 Minneapolis study, which found arrest to be the most effective police response to a domestic violence incident, the Department of Justice in 1990 funded replication studies in six cities--Atlanta, GA., Charlotte, NC., Colorado Springs, CO., Omaha, NE., Milwaukee, WI., and Miami, FL. These studies strongly suggest that, although arrest alone may deter some men from continuing their abuse, when a battering suspect is unemployed, he tends to be more violent after an arrest. The Minneapolis study had not revealed that employment status altered the specific deterrence effect of arrest.
Criminologist Lawrence Sherman, an author of the Minneapolis study, argued that that study had focused on too small a sample of batterers to be able to produce useful information for other jurisdictions considering the effectiveness of arrest. He also noted that the study did not consider that arrested men may have been least likely to repeat their violence against the same women because of a displacement, rather than a deterrent, effect; that is, the researchers failed to investigate whether these men had simply gone on to batter new victims.
Some police statistics seem to support the contention that mandatory-arrest policies prevent incidences of domestic violence. Following the enactment of Connecticut's mandatory arrest law in October 1986, for example, the Hartford Police Department reported a 28% drop in the number of calls for assistance in domestic violence incidents. However, such statistics do not prove conclusively that mandatory-arrest policies have a deterrence effect. Instead, they may indicate a greater hesitation on the part of battered women to report incidents of violence to the police.
After an incident of domestic violence, for example, a woman might wish to call the police and have them come to her home. She might reason that a police officer could diffuse an explosive situation or frighten her batterer into ceasing his abuse. She may engage in a careful cost-benefit analysis and determine that, while police presence would be useful, an arrest would not. A woman may be dependent on the income of her batterer, for example, or she may not want their children to witness their father's arrest. Such a woman, if aware of a mandatory-arrest policy in her jurisdiction, would likely refrain from calling the police at all, and would thereby be deprived of a potentially useful tool in her struggle to end the violence in her life.
While battered women's advocates may dismiss these concerns, they are nonetheless compelling to many battered women, who might well perceive a mandatory-arrest policy as paternalistic. While such concerns cannot be precisely correlated with the race and class of a woman or her batterer, they do indicate that women have individualized responses to the problem of domestic violence that are not respected by mandatory-arrest policies.
Advocates argue that mandatory arrest symbolizes the support of the state to a battered woman. However, for significant numbers of women, the state is not a source of comfort but a cause for mistrust or anger. Women in relationships with Black men, for example, confront a legacy of police brutality and disproportionately harsh prosecutorial treatment of Black arrestees. Particularly when these women are also Black and have grown up in a community with an excessive police presence, they may view the police with great suspicion and may not find the arrest of their batterer to embody support for them. Thus, any feelings of relief that an arrest of their batterers might otherwise bring may be trumped by feelings of guilt, fear and concern about the fate of their partners in the criminal justice system.
(Continued on Site)

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Document ID: 2809

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(Communities Against Violence Network)

Title	Mandatory Arrest for Domestic Violence - A Universal Solution?
Author	Vernellia R. Randall, Esq.
Synopsis	Article discussing mandatory arrest policies
Description	excerpted from, Barbara Fedders, Lobbying for Mandatory-arrest Policies: Race, Class, and the Politics Of the Battered Women's Movement, 23 New York University Review of Law and Social Change 281, 291-296 (1997)(89 footnotes) Battered women's advocates rest their support for mandatory arrest on the deterrence of batterers and empowerment of women they believe the policy can achieve. Subsequent criminological studies, however, suggest that any beneficial effects produced by mandatory arrest may not be universal across race and class. To test the validity of the results of the 1984 Minneapolis study, which found arrest to be the most effective police response to a domestic violence incident, the Department of Justice in 1990 funded replication studies in six cities--Atlanta, GA., Charlotte, NC., Colorado Springs, CO., Omaha, NE., Milwaukee, WI., and Miami, FL. These studies strongly suggest that, although arrest alone may deter some men from continuing their abuse, when a battering suspect is unemployed, he tends to be more violent after an arrest. The Minneapolis study had not revealed that employment status altered the specific deterrence effect of arrest. Criminologist Lawrence Sherman, an author of the Minneapolis study, argued that that study had focused on too small a sample of batterers to be able to produce useful information for other jurisdictions considering the effectiveness of arrest. He also noted that the study did not consider that arrested men may have been least likely to repeat their violence against the same women because of a displacement, rather than a deterrent, effect; that is, the researchers failed to investigate whether these men had simply gone on to batter new victims. Some police statistics seem to support the contention that mandatory-arrest policies prevent incidences of domestic violence. Following the enactment of Connecticut's mandatory arrest law in October 1986, for example, the Hartford Police Department reported a 28% drop in the number of calls for assistance in domestic violence incidents. However, such statistics do not prove conclusively that mandatory-arrest policies have a deterrence effect. Instead, they may indicate a greater hesitation on the part of battered women to report incidents of violence to the police. After an incident of domestic violence, for example, a woman might wish to call the police and have them come to her home. She might reason that a police officer could diffuse an explosive situation or frighten her batterer into ceasing his abuse. She may engage in a careful cost-benefit analysis and determine that, while police presence would be useful, an arrest would not. A woman may be dependent on the income of her batterer, for example, or she may not want their children to witness their father's arrest. Such a woman, if aware of a mandatory-arrest policy in her jurisdiction, would likely refrain from calling the police at all, and would thereby be deprived of a potentially useful tool in her struggle to end the violence in her life. While battered women's advocates may dismiss these concerns, they are nonetheless compelling to many battered women, who might well perceive a mandatory-arrest policy as paternalistic. While such concerns cannot be precisely correlated with the race and class of a woman or her batterer, they do indicate that women have individualized responses to the problem of domestic violence that are not respected by mandatory-arrest policies. Advocates argue that mandatory arrest symbolizes the support of the state to a battered woman. However, for significant numbers of women, the state is not a source of comfort but a cause for mistrust or anger. Women in relationships with Black men, for example, confront a legacy of police brutality and disproportionately harsh prosecutorial treatment of Black arrestees. Particularly when these women are also Black and have grown up in a community with an excessive police presence, they may view the police with great suspicion and may not find the arrest of their batterer to embody support for them. Thus, any feelings of relief that an arrest of their batterers might otherwise bring may be trumped by feelings of guilt, fear and concern about the fate of their partners in the criminal justice system. (Continued on Site)
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