Domestic violence laws began to change as society started to view domestic violence as an important social issue. Discuss the impact of such changes

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Historically, police officers made an arrest in a domestic violence situation only as a last resort. In the late 1970s through the 1980s, however, this attitude began to change as domestic violence can to be understood a serious social problem. As a result, there have been significant changes in how the criminal justice system responds to domestic violence. The police have been urged to make more arrests, and prosecutors to file charges, no matter what the wishes of the victim. Mandatory-arrest policies clearly produce higher arrest rates (Hirschel et al., 2007).
Whether these mandatory arrest policies are effective in reducing intimate-partner violence has been questioned, however (Hirschel et al., 1992). Arrests, however, do not always lead to prosecutions. Many women call the police to stop the violence but later have a change of heart and refuse to sign a complaint. The criminalization of domestic violence has also greatly increased the workload of the courts. In response to the growing awareness of domestic violence as a serious social problem, many courts in the United States have created domestic violence courts that emphasize a problem-solving approach. An evaluation of one such court found significantly lower rates of re-arrests among defendants processed through the domestic violence court (Gover, MacDonald, and Alpert, 2003). A growing number of courts rely on batterer programs as the mandate of choice. Legal sanctions against domestic violence are not limited to criminal law. Victims of domestic violence may request a civil protection order. However, civil protection orders are not self-enforcing; there is even a danger that a civil protection order may induce a false sense of security among some women who are at risk of continued battery from a former intimate. Conversely, some are concerned that protection orders can be abused.