Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women (2004) / Chapter Skim
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4 Prevention and Deterrence
4 Prevention and Deterrence
Pages 66-82
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From page 66... ...
AN EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MODEL Public health models can be applied to the problem of violence against women using the traditional framework of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention effects a change in risk factors.
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From page 67... ...
Primary Prevention In primary prevention, strategies and programs should be based on plausible and stable theories or causes and should be rigorously evaluated. Current primary prevention strategies focusing on the first occurrence of violence include offering school-based training in conflict resolution, educating the public about healthy relationships, providing early sex education, limiting children's exposure to sexually violent and aggressive media images, targeting specific interventions for children witnessing partner violence, and integrating training in parenting skills into school health curricula.
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From page 68... ...
Specific information such as marital status, age, and prior victimization experience, which have been shown to be risk factorsis important for prioritizing prevention efforts and targeting them to specific groups (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002~. The design of projects targeting batterers and potential batterers must be sensitive to different cultural backgrounds, including the importance assigned to having an intact family in a given culture, and to different kinds of family situations and arrangements.
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From page 69... ...
Unfortunately, the substantial variation among education intervention models has led to little cumulative or synthesized knowledge about effective methods of delivering such education and offered limited understanding of both its proximal and distal preventive effects (Breitenbecher, 2000; McCall, 1993~. Maxwell and Post (2002)
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From page 70... ...
Universities, police departments, private property managers (Shenkel, 1989) , and other public agencies have, for example, installed emergency phones, increased lighting, tightened security in residence halls, provided escort services, and increased the number of police in certain areas.
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From page 71... ...
As the principle of evidence-based practice gains currency, however, the demand for evaluation studies that meet high standards for both design and implementation is likely to grow. The National Task Force on Community Preventive Services, like other groups that assess the evidence base for practice, uses an algorithm to assess the quality of published studies and reports.
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From page 72... ...
During the 1970s, the influence of the modern feminist movement led to a series of reforms designed to strengthen legislation and practice in response to physical and sexual assaults against women by intimate partners and others (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1998~. Since then, many legal sanction strategies have been implemented in an effort to reduce violence against women (see Gosselin, 2000; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 1998; Pagan, 1996; Pleck, 1989, 1987~.
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From page 73... ...
Legal Reforms for Sexual Assault Maxwell and Post (2002) identify three areas in which legislative changes to address sexual assault have occurred since enactment of the 1970s rape statutes: sex offender notification laws, sexually violent predator laws, and laws on the use of intoxicants that facilitate sexual assault.
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From page 74... ...
Legal Reforms for Intimate-Partner Violence Most state legislatures have presumptive arrest laws, and many police departments prescribe that officers arrest a suspect whenever they have probable cause that a misdemeanor or felony assault has occurred between two intimate partners, even if they have not witnessed the event (Zorza, 1992; Hirschel et al., 1991; Sherman and Cohen, 1989~. By 1997, more than $1 billion was being spent annually by the federal government to encourage local authorities to use formal interventions, such as arrests and prosecutions, rather than informal interventions to address intimatepartner violence (National Institute of Justice, 1997~.
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From page 75... ...
Government agencies such as CDC and NIT should continue to promote research in areas in which there is insufficient evidence for making decisions about specific interventions. RESEARCH ON DETERRENCE The general literature on crime control provides substantial evidence that criminal justice sanctions have a deterrent effect on a wide range of behaviors.
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From page 76... ...
Measuring Declarative and Deterrent Effects Declarative effects of laws and their enforcement involve establishing normative social boundaries and distinguishing behaviors that are tolerated from those that are not. Bonnie (1981)
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From page 77... ...
· The perceived social costs of arrest not only are inversely related to participation in wife assault, but also are a function of other theoretically relevant factors, such as gender, race, socioeconomic status, normative approval of violence, power imbalances in heterosexual intimate relationships, and isolation from community resources of social control (Williams, 1992~. These findings provide some empirical support for a theory of general deterrence and its application to the understanding and prevention of violence against women.
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From page 78... ...
Virtually all of the specific deterrence research on violence against women is on repeat intimate-partner violence. Arrest Research Few studies have had as much impact on violence prevention and control policies as the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (see, e.g., Sherman and Cohen, 1989~.
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From page 79... ...
They note that these mixed results do suggest that serious offenders are less influenced by legal sanctions, and indeed if such sanctions have any influence at all, they may actually increase violence against women (Mills, 1998~. Summary The literature on repeat intimate-partner violence demonstrates that legal sanctions do have deterrent effects, although modest in magnitude, but that these effects vary by the characteristics of perpetrators, their relationship with their partners, their stake in social conformity, and factors influencing the decision to impose sanctions.
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From page 80... ...
Moreover, such research should focus on all forms of violence against women, not just intimate-partner violence. A BROADER FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURE RESEARCH While research shows that the collective actions of the criminal justice system exert a substantial deterrent effect on crime, this fact is of limited value in formulating policy for specific crime problems (Nagin,1998~.
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From page 81... ...
For example, where the perceived probability of punishment is uncertain, there may be an initial deterrent effect. However, Sherman found that initial deterrent effects are eroded as offenders learn through experience that they have overestimated the chances of being caught and punished (Sherman, 1992b; Ross, 1982~.
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From page 82... ...
82 RESEARCH ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Links Between Actual and Intended Policy Finally, the link between intended and actual policy has not been well explored. In some jurisdictions, for example, police have reacted to mandatory arrest policies by arresting both partners involved in intimate-partner assault calls.
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