PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@EndToDV.org

Criminal Law Attorney Issues Passionate Plea to End Mandatory Arrest for Domestic Violence

WASHINGTON / November 3, 2021 – A leading criminal law attorney has recently published a milestone article calling for the abolition of mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence. “The Case for Eliminating the VAWA’s Financial Support for Pro-Arrest Domestic Violence Laws,” written by Olivia Hinerfeld, reviews dozens of research studies that demonstrate how mandatory arrest laws often endanger victims and disproportionately harm minorities.

Domestic violence is a significant problem in the United States, endangering the safety of victims and weakening families (1). Each year there are 4.2 million male victims and 3.5 million female victims of physical domestic violence (2).

Mandatory arrests for domestic violence originally were designed to deter repeat offenders and protect victims. Experience reveals, however, that mandatory arrest policies in fact harm the victim population by (3):

  • Disempowering victims in the aftermath of a domestic violence incident (4)
  • Ensnaring minority victims in the criminal system (5)

An early study on the effects of mandatory arrest policies found that abuse victims were 64% more likely to become homicide victims if their partners were arrested and jailed, compared to when partners were issued a police warning and allowed to stay at home (6). This disparity was almost entirely concentrated among Blacks, with arrest nearly doubling the death rate among the 529 Black domestic violence victims. Black victims of domestic violence are “disproportionality likely to die after arrests relative to white victims,” the study concluded.

Subsequent research confirms that the overcriminalization of domestic violence does not deter violence, but only deters the reporting of violence (7). These laws have disproportionately harmed women of color who are more likely than white women to be victims of crime, and more likely to be arrested during a domestic violence incident (8). Black women experience domestic violence at a rate 35% higher than White women (8), and are less likely to seek out social or medical services (9, 10).

Despite good intentions, mandatory arrests have exacerbated racial inequalities in the criminal system, contributed to mass incarceration, and made victims feel less safe. Hinerfeld concludes the article by calling for the elimination of all mandatory arrest policies by Congress, the states, and local law enforcement agencies.

A group of 46 state domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions have written a Moment of Truth statement that concurs with the Hinerfeld analysis. The coalitions wrote that traditional policies “contribute to a pro-arrest and oppressive system that is designed to isolate, control, and punish.” (11)

Hinerfeld is the former president of the Georgetown University Student Bar Association, Executive Editor of the American Criminal Law Review, and was selected to serve on the Biden Foundation’s advisory council to end domestic violence. Her article is published in the Criminal Law Practitioner of the American University College of Law.

Citations:

  1. Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Justice Denied: Arrest Policies for Domestic Violence (2021). https://endtodv.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Arrest-Policies.pdf
  2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/2015data-brief508.pdf Tables 9 and 11.
  3. Olivia Hinerfeld. The Case for Eliminating the VAWA’s Financial Support for Pro-Arrest Domestic Violence Laws. Criminal Law Practitioner (2021). https://www.crimlawpractitioner.org/post/the-case-for-eliminating-the-vawa-s-financial-support-for-pro-arrest-domestic-violence-laws
  4. Welch. Mandatory Arrest of Domestic Abusers: Panacea or Perpetuation of the Problem of Abuse? DePaul L. Rev. (1994).
  5. Meda Chesney-Lind. Criminalizing Victimization: The Unintended Consequences of Pro-arrest Policies for Girls and Women. Criminology & Public Policy (2002).
  6. Lawrence W. Sherman & Heather M. Harris. Increased death rates of domestic violence victims from arresting vs. warning suspects in the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment, J of Experimental Criminology (2014).
  7. Battered Women’s Justice Project. Mandatory Arrests. https://www.bwjp.org/our-work/topics/mandatory-arrests
  8. Patricia Tjaden & Nancy Thoennes. Full Report on the Prevalence, Incidence, & Consequences of Violence Against Women. Dept. of Justice (2000). https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf
  9. Katrina Armstrong et al. Racial/Ethnic Differences in Physician Distrust in the United States, Am J Public Health (2007).
  10. Lindsay Wells & Arjun Gowda. A Legacy of Mistrust: African Americans and the U.S. Healthcare System, UCLA Health (2020).
  11. Moment of Truth. (2020). https://www.endabusewi.org/moment-of-truth/