Policing Woman Battering

Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

“…For another example, as noted above, policies mandating or encouraging officers to make arrests when they have probable cause in cases of spousal assault have increased the incidence of such arrests. The documentation that comes with officers' compliance with these rules facilitates their enforcement by supervisors, but even so, given officers' near monopoly on information about cases in which arrests are not made, compliance is only partial at best, (Cross and Newbold 2010;Ferraro 1989). Generally, we might hypothesize that the lower the visibility of the discretionary action that is the subject of administrative rules, the less able the department is to enforce the rule and the lower the rate of officers' compliance will be.…”

“…Many factors contributed to the adoption of such policies: a grass-roots battered women's movement pressed for legislative changes that would facilitate or compel law enforcement to invoke the law against offenders (Ferraro 1989); the threat of litigation against police departments; recommendations by the Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence; and the findings of the Minneapolis domestic violence experiment, which concluded that repeat violence was less likely when police made arrests (Sherman and Cohn 1989). Pro-arrest policies have increased the incidence of arrests in cases of spousal assault, though compliance by officers is only partial (Cross and Newbold 2010;Eitle 2005;Ferraro 1989;Hirschel et al 2007; Jones and Belknap 1999). Evidence from replications of the Minneapolis experiment have cast doubts on the conclusions that were drawn from that study, but it is doubtful that many departments have abandoned pro-arrest policies, which are still expected by sovereigns.…”

Sex Disparities in Arrest Outcomes for Domestic Violence

“…Previous research has shown that the introduction of mandatory, presumptive, or preferred arrest laws or policies alters how police respond to domestic assaults (Ferraro, 1989). These proarrest principles generally attempt to reduce the discretionary aspect of police decision making in the hope of increasing the number and frequency of arrests when responding to domestic disputes.…”

“…Until the 1990s, many police departments maintained policies that affirmatively discouraged arrest in domestic disputes (Zorza, 1992). However, more recently, the expansion of the types of crimes for which police can arrest without a warrant, the development of specialized reporting forms for police about the parameters of domestic violence arrests, and the introduction of proarrest laws and policies have all contributed toward increases in the number and frequency of arrests when responding to domestic disputes (Ferraro, 1989).…”

Wife battering, institutional appropriation, and treatment discourse: a struggle for discursive control

“…The attitudes of the Constable interviewed above are not only insulting to 26 women, but can be an obstacle to the effective implementation of mandatory arrest policies. In Arizona, Ferraro (1989b) finds that there is an unequal implementation of the presumptive arrest policy by officers according to their ideas about interpretation of the legal policy and ideological beliefs about the nature of domestic violence. Similarly Stith's (1990) research in the midwestern United States, finds that factors in police officer's lives influence police officers' attitudes and actions such as race and economic status (Ferraro 1989;Ferraro and Pope 1993), visible injuries and the offender's history of violence (Bachman and Coker 1995).…”