Victim, Police, and Prosecutorial Responses to Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence: A Comparative Approach

Abstract

Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) and the criminal justice response to such incidents is extensive, but the majority of this research has focused on IPV perpetrated by men against women in heterosexual partnerships. Yet, recent research has indicated that the prevalence of IPV among LGB (lesbian, gay, and bisexual) individuals may be as high as or higher than that of the general population. At the same time, a significant body of research has examined police and prosecutorial responses to IPV; again, the overwhelming majority of this research has also focused on heterosexual partners. Following this, the current research uses National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data to create dyads of both opposite-sex (i.e., male–female and female–male) and same-sex partners (i.e., male–male and female–female) to investigate the joint relationship between sex, sexual orientation, and three different criminal justice outcomes: victim refusal to cooperate with police, police decision to arrest, and the prosecutorial decision to deny a case.

Gender Role Attitudes and Prosecutorial Decision-Making in a Case of Intimate Partner Violence

“…For example, in a study analyzing opposite-sex IPV in a southern U.S. city, nearly half of the female-perpetrated IPV cases were rejected by prosecutors, a number significantly outweighing the rate for male-perpetrated IPV (Henning & Renauer, 2005). This pattern emerges in other research, with prosecutors more likely to proceed with IPV cases involving male, rather than female, arrestees (Kingsnorth & MacIntosh, 2007; Lantz, 2020). In Cox, Daquin, and Neal (2022), of which a subsample of data is used in the current study, certain points of prosecutorial decision-making were impacted by victim sex, such that when prosecutors read case files depicting IPV against a female, they were more likely to apply the most severe charge both initially and in plea bargaining.…”

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

“…Thus, it is unsurprising that men are far more likely to be arrested for IPV (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2020). There is also preliminary evidence to indicate that prosecutors are unlikely to deny prosecution for male-perpetrated IPV (Lantz, 2020). For example, MacNeil and colleagues (2020) manipulated the gender of the IPV defendant and found prosecutors recommended punitive criminal charges and a more punitive plea deal when the defendant was male.…”

Violencia intragénero entre parejas homosexuales en universitarios de Bucaramanga, Colombia

“…Respecto a la hora de identificar las diferencias a partir del sexo de los participantes, se pudo comprobar que existen diferencias estadísticamente significativas en cuanto a los tipos de violencia que suelen ejercerse entre parejas gais y parejas de lesbianas.En el estudio de Reyes et al,(20) no se identificaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre parejas lesbianas y parejas gais, ya que en su estudio encontró en una muestra de 201 participantes, que el 20,3% (n=40) de los hombres manifestó ser víctima de violencia, al mismo tiempo que el 19,3% (n=38) de las mujeres refirió violencia en el marco de una relación homosexual.En primer lugar, entre parejas gais se pudo establecer la violencia psicológica con las cifras más altas de violencia con un 65,2%, seguida de la violencia emocional con un 31,8%, luego la violencia física con un 25,8%, a continuación, la violencia sexual con una incidencia del 18,2% y finalizando con la violencia económica con un 12,9%. Esto es evidenciado de igual forma en estudios como los de Toro y Rodríguez(32) donde se encontró una alta incidencia de violencia psicológica con un 48%, seguida de violencia física y sexual.En este orden de ideas, varios estudios coinciden en identificar la violencia física como aquel tipo de violencia que se ejerce con mayor frecuencia y significación en las relaciones de pareja gay, reflejada en actos tales como agresión física, violación y acoso por parte de su pareja(33)(34)(35) .…”