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“Handling” Family Violence: Situational Determinants of Police Arrest in Domestic Disturbances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Sarah Fenstermaker Berk  and
Donileen R. Loseke
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Abstract

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The recent “discovery” of family violence, particularly violence between spouses, has elicited attention from social scientists and policy makers. Police intervention in domestic disputes is a primary focus. Critiques of police practice have often centered on police failure to arrest offenders in domestic violence incidents. Yet, the literature to date reveals little effort to examine systematically the discretionary role of police in domestic disputes. With data drawn from 262 official police reports concerning domestic disturbances, the propensity of police to make arrests is examined through a variety of exogenous variables. Police arrests, we find, reflect the immediate circumstances of police-citizen encounters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , 1981 , pp. 317 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

We wish to acknowledge the valuable criticisms provided by Richard A. Berk on an earlier draft of this paper. Additional thanks go to Nancy Blum and Chris Sproule for their meticulous coding of the data, as well as to Cheryl Goluch and Trina Marks Miller for typing the manuscript. We are indebted to the staff of the Santa Barbara Family Violence Program for their kind cooperation. Support for this project was provided in part by funds from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, a Faculty research grant from the UCSB Academic Senate, and the National Institute of Health (Grant # 1-RO1-MH34616-Q1A1).

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