NCJ Number
199711
Date Published
January 2004
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study examined the impact on domestic violence of various
features of relevant State laws and the characteristics of local
enforcement of domestic violence laws and strong legal advocacy
services.
Abstract
The homicide data were extracted from the Supplementary Homicide
Reports (SHR) of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR).
The researchers aggregated to the city level for each year the
number of homicides by the victim's gender, race, and marital
relationship to the offender. "Married" persons included
ex-spouses and common-law spouses; "unmarried" persons included
the SHR categories of "boyfriend" and "girlfriend." The core of
the data-collection strategy was to obtain informants within the
local agencies of the 50 largest cities and ask them to complete
a survey that inventoried policies or activities by type and year
of implementation. Four of 11 indicators of domestic violence
resources were measures of State statutes, including provisions
for warrantless and/or mandatory arrest, an index of the legal
consequences for violating a protection order, and an exposure
reduction index that increases in value with provisions for
no-contact orders and custody relief. Five of the indicators
measured components of local policy, including police arrest
policies, the presence of domestic violence units and training in
police agencies, the willingness of prosecutors' offices to take
domestic violence cases and the use of written policies for
prosecuting them, the presence of domestic violence units and
legal advocates in prosecutors' offices, and whether the
prosecutor's office has a "no-drop" policy. Two indicators
measured the strength of legal advocacy programs and the
prevalence of hotlines in the city. Because the dependent
variable was a count of homicide victims within a discrete
period, the authors used the Poisson likelihood function to
estimate models, with each observation weighted by the 3-year
average of the city's population. Consistent with previous
research, the authors found that much of the decline in
intimate-partner homicide over the past 25 years has been
associated with declining marital domesticity (decreasing rates
of marriage and increasing rates of divorce). Results suggest
that increases in alternatives to living with or depending upon
an abusive partner contributed to the decreasing homicide rates
of intimate partners. The remaining findings support the
retaliation hypothesis, i.e., resources that are intended to
reduce exposure to violence are associated with higher levels of
intimate homicide. One interpretation of this result is that
batterers increase their violence once their partners try to
leave. As the willingness of prosecutors to take cases increased,
so did homicide for married White and unmarried Black partners.
Prosecutor willingness to take cases was also associated with
higher levels of victimization among unmarried White women, and
the measure of prosecution specialization was associated with
greater victimization of unmarried White men. These results imply
that the willingness and capacity to prosecute cases of
protection order violations may aggravate already tumultuous
relationships. Implications of these findings are drawn for
researchers and for practitioners. 2 exhibits and 18 references
Date Published: January 1, 2004