Prior research on the effect of arrest on wife assault recidivism had equivocal results and mixed reception. Arrest is not always used in wife assault cases, and several studies suggest that arrest is influenced by incident severity rather than risk of recidivism. The present study examined the effect of arrest controlling for pre-arrest actuarial risk of recidivism, which was measured retrospectively and independently of arrest decision using the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment. In an archival study of 522 wife assault incidents with police attending, arrest was associated with pre-arrest risk for recidivism and with victim injury, incident severity, and other sample characteristics. In multivariate regression and survival analyses, arrest had no overall effect on recidivism but a small beneficial effect in lower risk cases, mostly in terms of a delayed time until recidivism. Arrest of higher risk cases could be increased by police use of a validated tool for risk assessment.
Ægisdóttir, S., White, M.J., Spengler, P.M., Maugherman, A.S., Anderson, L.A., Cook, R.S., et al. (2006). Meta-analysis of clinical judgment project: Fifty-six years of accumulated research on clinical versus statistical prediction . The Counseling Psychologist,34, 341-382.
2.
Andrews, D.A., & Bonta, J. (1994). The psychology of criminal conduct. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.
3.
Andrews, D.A., Zinger, I., Hoge, R.D., Bonta, J., Gendreau, P., & Cullen, F.T. (1990). Does correctional treatment work? A clinically relevant and psychologically informed meta-analysis. Criminology , 28, 369-404.
4.
Avakame, E.F., & Fyfe, J.J. (2001). Differential police treatment of male-on-female spousal violence. Violence Against Women,7, 22-45.
5.
Bachman, R., & Coker, A.L. (1995). Police involvement in domestic violence: The interactive effects of victim injury, offender's history of violence, and race. Violence and Victims, 10, 91-106.
6.
Berk, R.A., Campbell, A., Klap, R., & Western, B. (1992). A Bayesian analysis of the Colorado Springs spouse abuse experiment. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology , 83, 170-200.
Bonomi, A.E., Holt, V.L., Martin, D.P., & Thompson, R.S. (2006). Severity of intimate partner violence and occurrence and frequency of police calls. Journal of Interpersonal Violence,21, 1354-1364.
9.
Buzawa, E.S. (1982). Police officer response to domestic violence legislation in Michigan. Journal of Police Science and Administration , 10, 415-424.
10.
Buzawa, E.S., & Austin, T. (1993). Determining police response to domestic violence victims: The role of victim preference. American Behavioral Scientist, 36, 610-623.
11.
Buzawa, E.S., & Buzawa, C.G. (1993). The impact of arrest on domestic violence. American Behavioral Scientist, 36, 558-574.
12.
Buzawa, E.S., & Buzawa, C.G. (1996). Extent of the problem. In E. S. Buzawa & C. G. Buzawa (Eds.), Do arrests and restraining orders work? (pp. 1-13). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Campbell, J.C. (1986). Nursing assessment for risk of homicide with battered women. Advances in NursingScience, 8, 36-51.
15.
Campbell, J.C. (1995). Prediction of homicide of and by battered women . In J. C. Campbell (Ed.), Assessing dangerousness (pp. 96-113). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
16.
Cattaneo, L.B., & Goodman, L.A. (2005). Risk factors for reabuse in intimate partner violence: A cross-disciplinary critical review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse,6, 141-175.
17.
Cramer, E.P. (1999). Variables that predict verdicts in domestic violence cases. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14, 1137-1150.
18.
Davis, R.C., Smith, B.E., & Nickles, L.B. (1998). The deterrent effect of prosecuting domestic violence misdemeanors. Crime and Delinquency, 44, 434-442.
19.
Dugan, L., Nagin, D.S., & Rosenfeld, R. (2003). Do domestic violence services save lives?NIJ Journal,250, 20-25.
20.
Dunford, F.W., Huizinga, D., & Elliott, D.S. (1990). The role of arrest in domestic assault: The Omaha police experiment. Criminology, 28, 183-206.
21.
Ferraro, K.J., & Pope, L. (1993). Irreconcilable differences. In N. Z. Hilton (Ed.), Legal responses to wife assault (pp. 96-123). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
22.
Garner, J.H. (1997). Evaluating the effectiveness of mandatory arrest for domestic violence in Virginia. Richmond, VA: Commission on Family Violence Prevention.
23.
Garner, J., Fagan, J., & Maxwell, C. (1995). Published findings from the spouse assault replication program: A critical review. Journal of Quantitative Criminology , 11, 3-28.
Hilton, N.Z. (1989). One in ten: The struggle and disempowerment of the battered women's movement. Canadian Journal of Family Law, 7, 313-335.
27.
Hilton, N.Z., & Harris, G.T. (2005). Predicting recidivism among serious wife assaulters: A critical review and implications for policy and practice. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse,6, 3-23.
28.
Hilton, N.Z., & Harris, G.T. (in press). Criminal justice responses to partner violence: History, evaluation, and lessons from interventions for criminal conduct. In J. Lutzker & D. Whitaker (Eds.), Preventing partner violence: Foundations, intervention, issues. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
29.
Hilton, N.Z., Harris, G.T., & Rice, M.E. (2006). Sixty-six years of research on the clinical versus actuarial prediction of violence. The Counseling Psychologist , 34, 400-409.
30.
Hilton, N.Z., Harris, G.T., Rice, M.E., Lang, C., Cormier, C.A., & Lines, K.J. (2004). A brief actuarial assessment for the prediction of wife assault recidivism: The Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment. Psychological Assessment, 16, 267-275. (Correction published in 2005: 17, 131.)
31.
Hilton, N.Z., & Simmons, J.L. (2001). The influence of actuarial risk assessment and clinical judgments in tribunal decisions about mentally disordered offenders . Law and Human Behavior, 4, 391-406.
32.
Hirschel, J.D., Hutchison, I.W., & Dean, C.W. (1992). The failure of arrest to deter spouse abuse. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,29, 7-33.
33.
Ho, T.N. (2000). Domestic violence in a southern city: The effects of a mandatory arrest policy on male-versus-female aggravated assault incidents . American Journal of Criminal Justice, 25, 107-118.
34.
Jaffe, P.G., Hastings, E., Reitzel, D., & Austin, G.W. (1993). The impact of police laying charges. In N. Z. Hilton (Ed.), Legal responses to wife assault (pp. 62-95). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
35.
Kane, R.J. (2000). Police responses to restraining orders in domestic violence incidents. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 27, 561-580.
36.
Krauss, D.A. (2004). Adjusting risk of recidivism: Do judicial departures worsen or improve recidivism prediction under the federal sentencing guidelines?Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 22, 731-750.
37.
Kropp, P.R., & Hart, S.D. (2000). The Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA) Guide: Reliability and validity in adult male offenders. Law and Human Behavior, 24, 101-118.
38.
Maxwell, C.D., Garner, J.H., & Fagan, J.A. (2001). The effects of arrest on intimate partner violence: New evidence from the spouse assault replication program ( National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, pp. 1-14). Retrieved from http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/188199.pdf
39.
Miller, J. (2003). An arresting experiment. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 18, 695-716.
40.
Pate, A.M., & Hamilton, E.E. (1992). Formal and informal deterrents to domestic violence: The Dade County spouse assault experiment. American Sociological Review, 57, 691-697.
Shepard, M.F., Falk, D.R., & Elliott, B.A. (2002). Enhancing coordinated community responses to reduce recidivism in cases of domestic violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 17, 551-569.
45.
Sherman, L.W. (1992). Policing domestic violence. New York: Free Press.
46.
Sherman, L.W., & Berk, R.A. (1984). The specific deterrent effects of arrest for domestic assault. American Sociological Review, 49, 261-271.
47.
Sherman, L.W., Schmidt, J.D., Rogan, D.P., Smith, D.A., Gartin, P.R., Cohn, E.G., et al. (1992). The variable effects of arrest on criminal careers: The Milwaukee domestic violence experiment. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 83, 137-169.
48.
Straus, M.A., Hamby, S.L., McCoy, S.B., & Sugarman, D.B. (1996). The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2). Journal of Family Issues, 17, 283-316.
49.
Tauchen, H.V., & Witte, A.D. (1994). The dynamics of domestic violence: Does arrest matter?Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
50.
Williams, K.R. (2005). Arrest and intimate partner violence: Toward a more complete application of deterrence theory. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 660-679.
51.
Williams, K.R., & Houghton, A.B. (2004). Assessing the risk of domestic violence reoffending: A validation study. Law and Human Behavior , 28, 437-455.
52.
Wooldredge, J., & Thistlethwaite, A. (2002). Reconsidering domestic violence recidivism: Conditioned effects of legal controls by individual and aggregate levels of stake in conformity. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 18, 45-70.
