Does the certainty of arrest reduce domestic violence? Evidence from mandatory and recommended arrest laws

Abstract

Domestic violence remains a major public policy concern despite two decades of policy intervention. To eliminate police inaction in response to domestic violence, many states have passed mandatory arrest laws, which require the police to arrest abusers when a domestic violence incident is reported. Using the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, I find mandatory arrest laws actually increased intimate partner homicides. I discuss two potential mechanisms for this increase in homicides: decreased reporting by victims and increased reprisal by abusers. I investigate validity of these hypotheses by examining the effect of mandatory arrest laws on different sub-groups and by analyzing family homicides where the victim is less often responsible for reporting. There appears to be consistent evidence for the reporting mechanisms. For family homicides, mandatory arrest laws appear to reduce the number of homicides. This study therefore provides evidence that these laws may have perverse effects on intimate partner violence, harming the very people they seek to help.

Poverty, Violence, and Health: The Impact of Domestic Violence During Pregnancy on Newborn Health

“…This literature, with some exceptions, generally finds that increasing sanctions and resources reduces domestic violence as does reducing barriers to divorce (see Aizer and Dal Bo, 2009; Dugan, Nagin and Rosenfeld, 1999; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2006). Iyengar (2009) is an exception. She finds that mandating arrests in cases of domestic violence reduces reporting.…”

Partially Identified Treatment Effects Under Imperfect Compliance: The Case of Domestic Violence

“…According to data from the National Crime Victimization surveys, the annual rate of nonfatal intimate partner victimizations was 2.3 per 1000 persons age 12 The MDVE results were extremely influential in the introduction of a mandatory arrest policy but the results of the MDVE have come under criticism due to concerns regarding internal and external validity (Binder and Meeker [7][8], Lempert [14], and Buzawa and Buzawa [9]), the lack of persistence of the effects of a mandatory arrest policy over time (Tauchen and Witte [30]) and the possible behavioral consequences of the mandatory arrest policy on reporting by victims of domestic violence (Iyenger [13]). In this paper I re-analyze the data from the MDVE to address concerns regarding internal validity (regarding non-compliance with assigned 1 These statistics are available on the Bureau of Justice Statistics website.…”

“…However, work by Iyenger [13] which uses data from the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1976-2003 suggests that intimate partner homicides actually increased in states which had introduced mandatory arrest laws. 6 However, since homicides only form a small subset of domestic violence incidents, this analysis does not show (and does not claim to) that the mandatory arrest policy has increased the total number of incidents of domestic violence.…”

“…6 However, since homicides only form a small subset of domestic violence incidents, this analysis does not show (and does not claim to) that the mandatory arrest policy has increased the total number of incidents of domestic violence. Iyenger [13] shows, however, using data from the National Crime Victimization Surveys, that the behavioral impact of a mandatory arrest policy on reporting of incidents by victims may be negative and important. Unfortunately, while it is important to account for the effect of a decline in reporting by victims as a result of mandatory arrest it is difficult to do so when using data from MDVE in which victims do not know about the mandatory arrest policy when they report incidents of domestic violence to the police.…”

“…Unfortunately, while it is important to account for the effect of a decline in reporting by victims as a result of mandatory arrest it is difficult to do so when using data from MDVE in which victims do not know about the mandatory arrest policy when they report incidents of domestic violence to the police. The work by Iyenger [13] does suggest an important improvement that needs to be made to future versions of existing experimental designs which would in some way capture also the impact of mandatory arrest on reporting by victims. This may be done, for instance, by informing a subset of potential victims in the precinct which carries out the experiment of the mandatory arrest policy in advance of reporting, but this is left as an open question for future research.…”