Victim cooperation and the prosecution of domestic violence in a specialized court

Abstract

We address the role of victim cooperation in the prosecution of domestic violence cases in a specialized court in Toronto, Canada. We first examine what factors predict whether a case will proceed to prosecution. We find that, even in a court designed to minimize reliance on victim cooperation through the use of other types of evidence, when prosecutors perceive a victim to be cooperative, the odds that a case will be prosecuted are seven times higher than if a victim is not perceived to be cooperative. In the second part of our analysis, where we seek to determine the correlates of victim cooperation, we find that the two most important determinants of victim cooperation are the availability of videotaped testimony and meetings between victims and victim/witness assistance workers. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research and policy.The last several decades have been marked by careful scrutiny of criminal justice responses to domestic violence. Considerable research has examined both the role of police discretion in responding to domestic violence calls and the effect of arrest on recidivism rates (Fagan 1995;Sherman and Berk 1984; for review of arrest studies, see Fagan et al. 1995;Garner, Fagan, and Maxwell 1995). This attention to police practices, however, has not been paralleled by * We thank the three anonymous Justice Quarterly reviewers for their helpful comments,

Domestic violence: Predictors of victim support for official action

“…McLeod (1983) noted that in her sample males were less likely to cooperate, and over half of these dropped out at the point of police contact (i.e., the earliest opportunity). Hirschel and Hutchison (2003) found age to be unrelated to preference for arrest in their regression analysis, and Dawson and Dinovitzer (2001) found no relationship between age and victim support for prosecution. On the other hand, McLeod (1983), whose study is distinguished by its conceptualization of cooperation as a multistage concept, found younger victims more likely than older to want prosecution early on during police intervention.…”

“…A substantial body of research identifies victim support for official action as a major concern for prosecutors, and the presence or absence of such support has been found to be a strong predictor of prosecutorial decision making (Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001;Hirschel & Hutchison, 2001;Kingsnorth et al, 2001;Kingsnorth, Macintosh, & Sutherland, 2002;Quarm & Schwartz, 1983;Schmidt & Steury, 1989). It is, however, important to analyze victim preference equally as both a dependent and an independent variable.…”

Catch‐22: Exploring Victim Interests in a Specialist Family Violence Jurisdiction

“…Research and advocacy over past decades have combined to draw attention both to the inadequacies of criminal justice intervention in domestic violence as well as to the law's positive potential (Lewis, 2004;Lewis, et al, 2001;Buzawa & Buzawa, 1996;Fagan, 1996;Stubbs, 1994;Dobash & Dobash, 1992). Radical changes in law, policy, and practice have been implemented in the civil and criminal jurisdictions in many countries affecting the manner in which police, prosecution, victim advocates, courts, and probation services have oriented their work on domestic violence (Holder, 2006;Ventura & Davis, 2005;Robinson & Cook, 2006;Gondolf, 2002;Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001;Lewis et al, 2000).…”

Convicting and incarcerating felony offenders of intimate assault and the odds of new assault charges

“…Residence in these particular counties was significantly related to the odds of new charges being filed, whereas residence in any of the other counties was not related to the outcome measure. Except for the measures of whether a defendant had ever been incarcerated as a juvenile and county of residence, researchers have demonstrated the usefulness of controlling for one or more of these other measures in related studies (e.g., Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001;Ellis, 1984;Feder & Dugan, 2002;Mears et al, 2001;Schmidt & Steury, 1989;Stanko, 1982;Thistlethwaite, Wooldredge, & Gibbs, 1998). Tolerance values for all predictors suggested that multicollinearity was not a problem for either the analysis of indicted defendants or convicted defendants.…”

“…Scholars have long argued for examination of victimization data because of the high ratio of unreported to reported assaults on intimates (Dawson & Dinovitzer, 2001;Dutton, 1986;Feder & Dugan, 2002). The focus on new charges was inspired by Garner's (2005) observation regarding how many domestic violence victims bypass the police and go directly to prosecutors or to the courts, yet any official data are subject to the same general criticism of failing to capture undetected assaults that might be different in many respects from those detected.…”