Crime Control Effects of Prosecuting Intimate Partner Violence in Hamilton County, Ohio: Reproducing and Extending the Analyses of Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite

• NCJ Number: 222907
• Author(s): Joel Garner; Christopher Maxwell
• Date Published: January 2008
• Length: 200 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2006-IJ-CX-0005
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Award: The Effects of Prosecution on Violence Between Intimate Partners

Annotation

This study conducted indepth analyses of the data used in four recent publications of research conducted by John Wooldredge and Amy Thistlethwaite (Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite, 1999) in order to examine the effects on subsequent offending of prosecuting, convicting, and severely sentencing perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Hamilton County, OH.

Abstract

The study found that the prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of IPV arrestees to probation was associated with less repeat offending; however, the sentencing of IPV arrestees to a treatment program was not associated with less repeat offending. The sentencing of convicted IPV offenders to jail was linked with more repeat offending. Employment of the offender was consistently associated with less repeat offending; however, the effectiveness of prosecution, conviction, or sentencing severity did not vary by whether or not the offender was employed. Being married had no direct effect on repeat offending, but the effectiveness of conviction in reducing offending was improved if the offender was married. No other sanction type was influenced by the offender's marital status. Although the analyses of the current study confirm most of the findings published by Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite, the current finding that prosecution, conviction, and sentencing to probation for IPV offenders reduced reoffending was stronger than the inconsistent findings reported by Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite. The findings show the importance of verifying the published results of criminological research. The four publications of Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite reported a series of rigorous multivariate and multilevel analyses based on large but varying samples, multivariate and multilevel statistical models, and measures of repeat offending by IPV offenders. The current secondary analyses of these data are intended to provide a clearer explanation of the nature of the published analyses and to identify the extent to which the published analyses can be reproduced from the available data. 54 tables, 105 references, and appended supplementary data and information