Creating a Structured Decision-Making Model for Police Intervention in Intimate Partner Violence

For the past thirty years, activists in the domestic violence movement have pushed the criminal justice system to actively respond to intimate partner violence. Initiated at the grass roots level this movement now enjoys increasing support from government officials, researchers, and criminal justice practitioners. Many police departments have responded to the charge by creating domestic violence units, instituting better training on the issue, and having clearly written policies regarding response practices.

To address this difficult, but important problem, researchers in this field tend to approach it from three different avenues. Work is being done to assess the incidence of prevalence of violence among intimates, as well as other types of abuse. Others are working on developing interventions aimed at aimed at reducing domestic violence either by treating and/or sanctioning batterers, aiding the victims and survivors, or a combination of the two. The third avenue researchers have taken is to try to determine risk of intimate partner violence or repeated violence.

This study is part of the third group. It is an attempt to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about who is at most risk of committing future domestic violence once an incident has been recognized by the police. The work presented here is a result of collaboration among the Berkeley Police Department, the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership, and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. It was h d e d by the National Institute of Justice as part of their locally initiated partnership grants, which intent was to forge collaborative relationships between researchers and practitioners.

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http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/182781.pdf