Domestic Violence: Law Enforcement Response and Legal Perspectives

The purpose of this book is to describe to practitioners what the research tells us about domestic violence, including its perpetrators and victims, the impact of current responses to it and, more particularly, the implications of that research for day-to-day, real-world responses to domestic violence by law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges. Domestic violence tends to be underreported: women report only one-quarter to one-half of their assaults to police, men perhaps less. The vast majority of physical assaults are not life threatening; rather, they involve pushing, slapping, and hitting. This book describes the problem of domestic violence and reviews factors that increase its risks. The authors examine perpetrator and victim characteristics, including gender, age, and certain personality traits. It also reviews responses to the problem and what is known about these from evaluative research and police practice. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.