DIFFERENTIAL POLICE TREATMENT OF MALE‐ON‐FEMALE SPOUSAL VIOLENCE*

In: Criminology: the official publication of the American Society of Criminology, Band 35, Heft 3, S. 455-473

Abstract

Recent studies of police response to violence in which men attack women with whom they have a history of shared intimacy have not addressed the issue that inspired research in the first place: the "leniency thesis" that police treat men who beat their spouses less punitively than other violent offenders. In addition, research examining the deterrent effects of various police treatments of misdemeanor domestic violence is not responsive to complaints that abused women are denied protection of law when they have been victims of serious, felony‐grade, abuse by their spouses. This research analyzes the response of the Chester, Pennsylvania, police to 392 consecutively reported felony‐grade assaults by persons whose identities were known to victims and police. Results confirm the leniency thesis. Tabular analysis demonstrates that arrests occurred in 13% of male‐on‐female spousal assaults and 28% of other assaults. Logit analysis indicates that this difference in police response is not attributable to other variables that might be expected to result in differential treatment. We conclude that the practices and results reported by research conducted in progressive police jurisdictions that volunteer to participate in studies of police response to violence against women may not be generalizable to the great majority of U.S. police agencies that have not welcomed such study.