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Policing Domestic Violence

Name: Policing Domestic Violence
Author: Lawrence W. Sherman
ISBN: 9780029287316

by Lawrence W. Sherman

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Overview

Domestic conflict is the largest single cause of violence in America, yet police have traditionally been reluctant to make arrests for such assaults. In the past decade, however, that reluctance has been overcome, with a 70% increase in arrests for minor assaults, heavily concentrated among low-income and minority groups. Spearheading this nationwide crackdown are the 15 states and the District of Columbia which have adopted unprecedented statutes mandating arrest in cases of misdemeanor domestic battery. In Policing Domestic Violence, criminologist Lawrence Sherman confronts the tough questions raised by this controversial approach to a complex social problem. How should police respond to the millions of domestic violence cases they confront each year, when most prosecutors refuse to pursue them? Why does arresting unemployed batterers do more harm than good? What approaches should police adopt when arrest has totally opposite effects upon "haves" and "have-nots"? Sherman, a leading police researcher, is the architect of the 1984 Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment - the first controlled test of the effects of arrest on repeat crime. Here he describes what was learned from a multi-year federal research program to repeat the experiment in Milwaukee, Miami, Colorado Springs, Omaha, and Charlotte. The results are both surprising and provocative. In fact, arrest deters selectively. Sherman found that it effectively inhibits some offenders, but incites more violence in others. It may also deter batterers for a month or so, only to make them more violent later on. Under this policy, therefore, some women exchange short-term safety for a longer-term increase in danger. Sherman also shows that compulsory arrest reduces violence against middle-class women at the expense of those (often black) who are poor. Some advocates of the policy have endorsed this moral choice, but Sherman argues that domestic violence will continue in spite of, and sometimes because of, our

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the early 1980s, the Minneapolis Police Department participated in a ``controlled experiment'' that measured the effectiveness of arresting men who had assaulted their wives or female partners. In that study, University of Maryland criminologist Sherman ( The Quality of Police Education ) found that temporarily removing these men from the scene seemed to reduce the violence. Eventually, the U.S. Department of Justice funded evaluations (performed mostly by other criminologists) of efforts in six other cities to stop domestic violence through ``mandatory arrest'' policies, which were quickly embraced by at least 15 states. In this book written with freelancers Schmidt and Rogan, Sherman, who directs the Crime Control Institute in Washington, D.C., challenges the wisdom of mandatory arrest. Subsequent studies, he reports in this comprehensive review of police efforts to curtail domestic violence, have found that arrest reduces domestic violence in some cities, but increases it in others; lowers the incidence of domestic violence among employed offenders but not among the unemployed; and cuts domestic violence in the short run, but not necessarily over longer periods of time. This densely academic book is important reading for those concerned about violence against women, but it is more likely to be read by professionals than general readers. (Sept.)