Can The Police Reduce Domestic Violence? How Can They Help Prevent This Issue?

States around the country have given police the right to make warrantless arrests on in partner violence and has even limited their ability to use discretion by implementing mandatory arrests. This has made the job of the police much more difficult because they must go about handling situations like domestic violence delicately. It does not make it any easier now that the term “domestic violence” has now grown into an umbrella term including disputes between adults and children, blood relatives, and couples who sometimes are and are not married. Because the job of the police involves so many different factors and the changing social climate, it’s become quite difficult to discern whether or not having mandatory arrest laws are helpful. They

The cause of domestic violence is not too difficult to understand. The reason why people beat their intimate partner is because, one partner feels like they need to be superior against the other. They feel insecure and powerless, so they turn into violent behavior. Big life changed like becoming really ill or women getting pregnant can increase the chance to be in a domestic violence situation. Another reason may be going into debt, being unemployed, or losing something significant to one partner. (Joyful Heart Foundation). When a victim tries to leave, it could make their situation worse. By failing to leave the victim might feel more abandoned and hopeless. If we don’t change our ways, the situation will get worse. Statistics from domestic abuse have increased in mostly every end each year. If we don’t stop it, it will just increase and increase until somebody decides to change it. In the 1990’s there would be thousands or hundred thousands of victims. Now, each minute about 20-24 people are victims of physical violence. Which account for 12 million cases in a stretch of a year in the United States only. Now the question is how are we going to solve this.

A second example of a theory that would explain domestic violence would be the social learning theory. This theory falls under the category of the psychological theory. The social learning theory is the most relevant theory that applies to criminology. “Behavior is supported by rewards and extinguished by negative reactions or punishments” (Siegel, 2007, p.109). The social learning theory believes people are not born with the ability to act in

This paper will show common dynamics surrounding officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV) including the most associated causes for it. It will also touch on a few reasons why victims of OIDV are far less likely to come forward. The purpose of this paper is not to attempt to justify the actions of the abusive police officer, but rather to shed some light on the factors that appear to promote the conditions for OIDV. It will also lend to the reader perspective of the lifestyle an officer experiences as a result of the duty expectations. At the end of this paper, the reader will take away knowledge of specific factors that need to be considered when trying to recognize and change the conditions that build to cause OIDV.

The feminist movement and women’s advocacy groups identified domestic violence as a serious issue and demanded for a change in the police response (Feder and Henning 2005). In conjunction with the release of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment’s research findings that arrest deterred future acts of violence and aided in lowering recidivism rates, many states enacted the new police policies to facilitate the arrest of domestic violence perpetrators. Previously, officers assessed the scene and interviewed the parties then decided the best course of action based on the facts collected. Historically, police officers used discretion in “street-level decision making ranging from decisions on whom to stop, when to write a ticket, and when to follow agency policy” (Phillips and Sobol 2010:100). Yet, some research has suggested that the enactment of mandatory arrest laws “require a specific action, eliminating an officer’s discretion to ignore, stretch, or only provisionally apply criminal law” (Phillips and Sobol 2010:100). The dichotomy of such laws eliminated officer discretion thus leading to the increase of arrests of victims and perpetrators alike. Hirschel et. al. (2008) found that the existence of mandatory arrest laws produced higher arrest rates across all three relationship categories of intimate

In order to combat domestic violence, many states passed laws and legislation requiring police to make warrantless arrests in response to all domestic violence calls. Harvard scholar, Radha Iyengar, who has studied domestic violence related homicide and the effects of mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence, suggests that although these policies were created to help victims, the solution of mandatory arrests in domestic violence incidents, led to many negative consequences; putting many women in danger, rather than helping them (Iyengar). Though designed to deter violence by offenders, mandatory arrest laws make women more vulnerable to being arrested themselves, lead abuse in domestic violence disputes to become more severe, and deter women from reporting violence to police (Strout).

The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment is also known as (MDVE), was an experiment that evaluated the effectiveness of the police when they responded to domestic violence calls in Minneapolis. This experiment was conducted during early 80’s for over a year by Dr. Lawrence W. Sherman who at the time was the Director of Research at the Police Foundation that is a non-profit foundation to assist police department to become extra effective and by the Minneapolis Police Department with all the monetary support from the National Institute of Justice. The results were mix showing a deterrent effect for arrest and impacted the current police practices during the early 80’s. Ten years later, numerous law enforcement agencies implemented policies to enforce mandatory arrest, without any warrant, for domestic violence cases where the police officer had probable cause for an arrest since a crime had occurred.

Domestic Violence could be addressed in many ways but the best way is should be left up to the officer who arrives at the scene of the problem. Every domestic violence call is differently and it there is different ways for them to be handled. If there is physical violence and someone is in a lot of danger than the police officer should really remove them from the situation. According to the Minneapolis study, it was found that arrest produced lower rate of repeated domestic violence than separation and mediation. So basically, when a person is arrested at the time of a domestic violence situation the repeated offense is produced at a lower rate. One difference between domestic violence and domestic dispute is domestic dispute is an argument

What’s been proposed in the past to solve the problem? There has been many things proposed in the past to solve the problem, however some work more than others. The most common solution that you will hear about is domestic abuse hotlines. The domestic abuse hotline help recover the mental health of victims and survivors of domestic abuse relationship through human connection. This has been proposed as a solution for domestic abuse victim because it helps victims of abuse recover mentally. “Studies suggest that there is a relationship between intimate partner violence and depression and suicidal behavior”(NCADV). This is one of the many reasons why the domestic abuse hotline is needed to help domestic abuse victims. The domestic abuse project

Once the 1980’s came, a lot of different changes took place. If the police were called for help with domestic violence, they no longer ignored it. They would arrest and convict those who were guilty of domestic violence. If we look in today’s society although, some changes has been made on this topic; there are still a lot of work to do to prevent domestic violence and to raise awareness of this inconceivable social problem as we can see in the statistics of the state of South Caroline that makes this state No 1 for deadly violence against woman as was announced by the Washington Times in September 15, 2015.

Questions to consider in researching such a topic include: What can be classified as domestic violence? How are civilian and officer- involved domestic violence similar and different? What are warning sign of domestic violence? When should one report domestic violence? How can a law enforcement officer be a victim? Why do victims remain in the abusive relationships? How does officer-involved domestic violence impact the victim, the children, the agency, and the community?

Domestic Violence is one of the most common crimes that occur, however not all of them being reported. There are many effects and causes to this behavior in law enforcement officers that have been studied by many researchers doctors, authors, and the media. The victims of domestic violence from law enforcement officers (mostly being women) are affected by this greatly on a higher level than regular women who aren’t married to police officers or, as they have much more to lose if such acts were ever reported on their spouses. There are many theoretical causes of domestic violence from law enforcement officers, which effect their victims greatly, making it almost impossible for them to report any offense without some type of

Domestic Violence is one of the most common crimes that occur, however not all of them being reported. There are many effects and causes to this behavior in law enforcement officers that have been studied by many researchers and doctors, authors, and the media. The victims of domestic violence from law enforcement officers (mostly being women) are affected by this greatly on a higher level than regular women who aren’t married to police officers, as they have much more to lose if such acts were ever reported on their spouses. There are many theoretical causes of domestic violence from law enforcement officers, which effect their victims greatly, making it almost impossible for them to report any offense without some type of consequence of

There are many concepts/theories in regards to what researchers believe law enforcement can do that would lead to a more effective control over domestic violence. Researchers have many ideas that they believe will deter abuse such as batterer treatment programs, arrests, prosecution/sentencing, etc. However, concepts that are strictly related to the police having more effective control over domestic violence are arrests, treat domestic violence calls as a high priority, encourage victims to seek help, following up with the victim, etc. These concepts in particular have been helpful when trying to understand how the police try to alleviate domestic violence. Many researchers believe that arrests will lead to the reduction of domestic violence.

According to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), in 2003 to 2012, domestic violence accounted for almost a quarter of all violent crimes committed. According to the same survey conducted, only 55% of those domestic violence crimes were reported to the police. Based on a study that was conducted on past domestic violence crimes, there was a decline of domestic violence from 1994-2003 but in recent years, depending on the type of intimate partner violence, each either had a small increase or stayed the same (Truman, 2014).