If victims followed up with these fragmented services, they too often experienced the frustration of retelling the story of violence to every individual provider.†
† The San Diego Family Justice Center provides victims with advocacy, childcare, clothing, counseling, court support, deaf/hard-of-hearing assistance, emergency housing, food, forensic documentation of injuries, housing for pets, internet access, law enforcement, legal assistance, locksmith services, medical services, military assistance, phones, phone cards, restraining orders, support groups, safety planning, spiritual support, transportation, and victim compensation (San Diego Family Justice Center).
You should supplement official records with the victim’s personal knowledge about the offender. Keep in mind that for a variety of social and psychological reasons, victims may be reluctant to reveal the extent of the battering, particularly to police.
Police may consider soliciting the assistance of trained medical professionals to help determine a victim’s abuse history. A study of one initiative in which a doctor and a nurse (or paramedic) accompanied police on domestic violence calls found victims revealing much more about the extent to which their partner battered them than police typically elicit, suggesting that victims may feel more comfortable reporting repeat victimization to medical professionals. Even with the high levels of repeat victimization uncovered, few victims had sought counseling, shelter, or medical treatment for the prior assaults.
There is great interest in developing an assessment instrument police can use to predict and help prevent domestic violence homicides. Although some such instruments exist, they tend to over-predict lethality. This is because only a very small portion of domestic violence victims are murdered and distinguishing between victims who will be murdered and those who will not remains elusive. For instance, even though offender unemployment is a risk factor, the vast majority of unemployed abusers do not murder their current or former intimates. Even when you combine unemployment with other risks it does not give you the profile of a murderer, but someone who is at an increased risk of battering.
† More than 300 newspapers reported the results of the study, unprecedented coverage for that time (Fagan, 1996).
Generally, pro-arrest laws and policies apply not only to spouses, but to unmarried partners, former intimates, and persons who had or raised a child together. In many jurisdictions the laws or policies apply to both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.
Police interventions in domestic violence incidents have expanded beyond merely separating and counseling the parties; they’ve become full-blown criminal investigations in which witnesses are interviewed, neighbors are canvassed, injuries are photographed, physical evidence is collected, future threats are assessed, and victims are referred to follow-up protective services and helped to plan for their future safety. In addition, some states permit police to seize firearms from alleged batterers, and federal laws generally prohibit convicted misdemeanant batterers or those against whom there is a valid order of protection from possessing a gun. All U.S. states now permit police to make warrantless arrests for both misdemeanor and felony assaults.
The highly influential 1980s study of police interventions in domestic violence incidents in Minneapolis found deterrence value in arrest in misdemeanor domestic assaults, as compared to two other interventions — separation of parties or mediation of the dispute at the scene. However, less well-reported replication studies in the late 1980s produced mixed results. A more recent analysis combining five of the replication studies concluded there is only some modest deterrent effect from arrest. However, even this modest effect should be viewed with caution for several reasons:
A more recent study of victims of both misdemeanor and felony assaults concluded the following:
Victim advocacy groups have generally not been s