P1 Exclusive: Unintended social consequences

Understanding Domestic Violence with Richard Davis, ALM

The empirical evidence-based hyperlinked research paper available for download here is intended for all law enforcement officers in general and law enforcement administrators in particular. Law enforcement needs to begin lobbying public policy makers for changes in contemporary one-size-fits-all Duluth modeled policies, procedures, and programs related to domestic violence cases. Billions of dollars are being spent while the original goal of reducing fatal and non-fatal incidents has not been met: DV cases have only fallen at the same rate of (or less than) the rate of violence in general.

Interveners and ideological researchers need to understand that I’m not lobbying to spend less nor deprive victims of the resources and the support they need. The data clearly documents the need for law enforcement domestic violence intervention. However, we need to spend the billions smarter and better than we are now. If current policies are not saving lives or reducing the number of victimizations, as the data in Massachusetts and elsewhere document they are not, then it is only logical that interventions, policies and procedures need to change.

It has been my personal and professional experience to recognize that the majority of domestic violence interveners and public policy makers believe that law enforcement officers are (classic cliché here) a part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Law enforcement officers were very much involved with the conception and implementation of the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment. Law enforcement officers also worked closely with the architects of the Duluth intervention model when that intervention was providing services for victims who were being beaten, battered and raped.

Most importantly, when interveners and public policy makers were demanding that law enforcement treat domestic violence crime just like they treat all other crimes, law enforcement knew – those many years ago – that domestic violence is far more complex and multifaceted than most other crimes and it needed to be treated differently not the same as other crimes.

It is time that interveners and public policy makers understand or appreciate the difficulties presented to law enforcement by many of the contemporary definitions of domestic violence and the one-size-fits-all laws that are often far more subjective than objective.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to demonstrate that labeling all familial acts of aggression or coercion as domestic violence reduces resources and services for victims who are beaten, battered and raped, (2) mandatory arrest removes from law enforcement the ability to provide different interventions and services for the very dramatically different needs and desires of individually diverse victims and families and (3) ideological hunches and hope interventions need to be replaced with interventions supported by empirical evidence-based data.

Law enforcement officers also know that as long as interveners and public policy makers continue to claim, despite the data to the contrary, that contemporary domestic violence policies are working well, and as long as interveners and public policy makers continue to think that this nation can arrest and incarcerate its way out of this enigma, domestic violence will surely continue to be the single call officers respond to more than any other.

Richard Davis is a member of the International Honor Society of Historians and an instructor for Quincy College at Plymouth. He is the vice president of the board of directors for the Community Center for Non-Violence and the vice president of Family Nonviolence Inc. His collaborative domestic violence support Web site, The Cop and the Survivor, with law summaries, editorials and other information, can be found at www.rhiannon3.net/cs/index.html He is the author of "Domestic Violence: Intervention, Prevention, Policies and Solutions" from CRC Press and "Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies" from Praeger publishers. He has written numerous articles for newspapers, journals and magazines concerning the issue of domestic violence. He writes a monthly column for www.nycop.com and an occasional column for www.PoliceOne.com. He also has a Web site at www.policewriter.com. A recent work is an article that defines domestic violence in the multivolume Encyclopedia of Psychology by the Oxford University Press and Yale University. He lives in Plymouth, Mass., with his wife and the two youngest of five children. He can be reached at rldavis@post.harvard.edu.