er 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 swayed by findings of little or modest effect of arrest. For many advocates, batterer arrest is seen as an important symbol of a woman’s legal right to be free of intimate partner violence and, moreover, argue that police continue to arrest other types of offenders without strong evidence of its effectiveness. Arrest is believed to be an important message to children that abuse of their parent is illegal, and perhaps also a deterrent to male children as they become men.††† This belief has not yet been properly studied, however.
† Nearly ten percent of the more than 3,000 studied battered repeatedly regardless of the intervention. This group of 250 batterers accounted for 7,380 battering incidents in the six months after the initial intervention. Interventions, even arrest, did not deter this small but violent group.
†† The researchers found that batterers who battered again had an increased likelihood of battering a third time, and offenders who were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident were more likely to re-offend. The researchers did not find that marital status, poverty, race, education or gender improved the effect of arrest, but because they did not have access to employment information, they could not rule out that arrest deters employed offenders but not unemployed offenders.
††† Victims of domestic abuse have also called for police agencies to monitor, address, and more appropriately sanction officers engaging in domestic assault. Although some police agencies have been responsive, additional efforts are required for victims to have higher levels of confidence in police agencies’ domestic violence response policies.
Domestic violence restraining orders are frequently violated although some offenders may be deterred by them. Some research findings suggest that a victim is more likely to seek a protective order if the partner had a criminal history of violent offending, which may be why so many orders are violated; those with robust abuse histories may be the least likely to b