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POLICEDECISIONMAKING

AND DOMESTICVIOLENCE

All states have enacted mandatory or preferred arrest

statutes that require or encourage officers to arrest the

batterer in domestic violence incidents when probable

cause exists. Mandatory arrest laws still allow officers

much choice about when to arrest, because the criteria

for whether there is enough evidence to meet the stan-

dard of probable cause are ambiguous. Officers use

several legal and extralegal criteria to make arrest

decisions and also rely on stereotypes to form infer-

ences about specific cases. This entry describes find-

ings from numerous studies that have examined how

officers interpret, investigate, and respond to domestic

violence situations. A focus on how officers infer and

interpret information is important to design effective

academy training that addresses the unintentional

effects of stereotypes and improves police decision

making so that equal protection is provided to all vic-

tims of domestic violence. Although research shows

that academy training has little effect on police arrest

decisions, prior training has not focused on how offi-

cers arrive at decisions.

How Officers Think About

Domestic Violence

Decision frames are a set of rules about how to make

arrest decisions; they guide what questions are asked,

what inferences are drawn, and what criteria receive

the most consideration in arrest decisions. Decision

frames derive from socialization and are connected to

officers’ values, attitudes, and worldviews. Officers

may use three decision frames to investigate and inter-

pret information: legal, normative, and efficiency.

The legal frame assumes that officers apply poli-

cies or statutes using only legal criteria and a strict

interpretation of the statutes. The legal frame assumes

a rational decision maker who does not use attitudes

or stereotypes to interpret information. Much research

shows that the legal frame is not an accurate portrayal

of officers’ decision making.

Officers typically give greater consideration to the

normative and efficiency frames in asking questions

during an investigation and making decisions about

arrest. The normative frame emphasizes the following

questions: Who is responsible? Was his or her actions

justified or not? Using the normative frame, officers

examine what happened in the past and evaluate the

moral appropriateness of each party’s actions and

their moral character. In the case of domestic vio-

lence, officers using the normative frame would arrest

both disputants if the parties are equally blameworthy.

However, when the normative frame is used, battered

women may be blamed for the violence when they

deviate from social gender-biased norms.

Officers using the efficiency frame do not attempt

to unravel the past but assess the credibility of each

disputant to determine whether an arrest is likely to

lead to a successful conviction. To avoid mistakes that

cause lawsuits or unfavorable media publicity, they

assess the likelihood that each party will commit fur-

ther violence. In the efficiency frame, officers focus on

the present and future ramifications of their decisions

and are concerned with how an arrest will affect their

time, raises, and promotions. The efficiency frame also

allows departmental and system procedures to influ-

ence officers’ decisions. Officers are less likely to

make an arrest if more paperwork is required when a

suspect is arrested, and this finding has led to policies

that require officers to complete a report irrespective of

whether they arrest or do not arrest a suspect. Research

has found that arrest rates did not increase after

mandatory-arrest state laws were enacted; however,

arrest rates increased if the counties had coordinated

responses, whereby the prosecutors and courts fol-

lowed through with certain sanctions for arrested bat-

terers. Research has found that when departmental

policy is to arrest both parties when both claim self-

defense, officers will follow this policy even when

state laws discourage the arrest of both parties.

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