Criminal prosecution of abusive men is described here as a power resource used by battered women to help bring about satisfactory arrangements for managing conjugal violence. This article examines relevant theory on exchange and power processes to explain the conditions of victim empowerment. It then describes cases of women who filed charges against their conjugal partners to show how victims may file, but later drop, charges as a rational power strategy for determining the future course of their relationships. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of prosecutorial policies that limit battered women's control over criminal justice processes.

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The 1994 VAWA initiated a process whereby the implementation of evaluation research follows the development and implementation of criminal justice policies designed to protect victims of violence against women. It emerged from a relatively short history of research, most of which has not been rigorously evaluated. Writing about domestic violence in 1995, without explicit reference to the recently enacted Violence Against Women Act, Fagan (1996) noted that …research and evaluation on arrest and prosecution, civil or criminal protection orders, batterer treatment, and community interventions have generated weak or inconsistent evidence of deterrent effects on either repeat victimization or repeat offending. (p. 1) Fagan (1996) argued that most research conducted by 1995 had not addressed questions about the effectiveness of legal interventions in controlling violence. Not surprisingly, most policy research attends to how practitioners implement policy and enact their responsibilities. But today we expect more. We want to know the consequences of those activities for preventing crime and protecting victims. Congress recognized this need in 1996 when it required the Attorney General to "formulate and publish a unified national crime prevention research and evaluation strategy … regarding the impact and effectiveness of the crime and violence prevention initiatives…" (H.R. 2076), a mandate addressed in a Report to Congress by Sherman et al. (1997, 1998). Using standards for assessing "whether a program has succeeded in causing less crime" (Sherman 1997, p. 6), the authors argued for rigorous impact evaluations. With respect to programs funded under VAWA, the traditional concern for detecting and punishing crimes in the interest of justice should go further to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice policies in protecting victims. Of course, after just five years, research spawned by VAWA is only now beginning to appear in reports or articles likely to have an impact on policy. Indeed, apart from what guidance might be offered by research, policy makers and practitioners have barely had time to implement what they hope will be effective criminal justice programs initiated under VAWA's grants for local initiatives (U.S. Attorney General, 1999, II-18). Thus our report This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 4 The movement to prevent domestic violence against women has roots in Colonial America, found new attention in the late Nineteenth Century, and was rediscovered in the early 1970's in political company with reforms against child abuse (Pleck, 1987). Concurrent with the movement against wife-beating, the Women's Liberation Movement responded against rape and sexual assault (Schechter, 1982). But while the political response to rape and sexual assault has cen...