Police responses to battering in a progressive pro-arrest jurisdiction*

Abstract

This study was conducted in Boulder County, Colorado, a jurisdiction with a pro-arrest policy in place since 1986 and with a progressive agency, the Domestic Abuse Prevention Project (DAPP), designed to oversee systemic responses to intimate partner battering. The data for this study consist of the 1,521 incident reports of intimate partner battering submitted by Boulder County police in 1994. In addition to examining the types of police responses, we employed multivariate analysis to examine legal and extralegal characteristics potentially related to police responses to battering, using two dependent variables: (1) whether any formal police action was taken, and (2) whether the defendant was taken to jail (the most extreme police response). Overall the findings suggest a far more serious police response to batterers than found in prior studies. Moreover, extralegal factors appeared to play a less prominent role in police decision making than reported in previous studies. The findings indicate the significance of an umbrella, in-house agency designed to oversee systemwide responses to battering.