پلیسی کردن خشونت خانگی:آیا جنسیت افسر مهم است؟

This research assessed whether female officers respond to domestic violence differently from male officers. Though many studies had analyzed police responses to domestic violence since the 1980s, very few had empirically examined different types of actions, especially noncoercive actions, employed by women and men in handling domestic violence. Using data collected by a large-scale observational project, this research analyzed police supportive and control actions toward citizens involved in domestic violence. Findings showed that female officers were more likely than male officers to provide support to citizens involved in domestic violence. Female and male officers, however, did not differ significantly in exercising control actions toward citizens. Regression results from separate models for female and male officers revealed that some of the variables are predictive of police actions for one gender but not the other. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Police responses to domestic violence had become the focal concern of a large number of studies since the 1980s. Research on police responses had been directed along two main avenues. Some studies had focused on the effectiveness of different types of police interventions (e.g., arrest, separation, and mediation) in reducing future violence (e.g., Dunford et al., 1990, Hirschel et al., 1991, Pate and Hamilton, 1992 and Sherman and Berk, 1984). Though these studies did not produce consistent results regarding the deterrent effect of arrest, their findings, especially those from the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (Sherman & Berk, 1984), had led directly to the adoption of mandatory or presumptive arrest policies by police departments throughout the country. A second and dominant line of inquiry in examining police responses to domestic violence concerned a wide array of factors that contributed to variation in police responses during conflict resolution (e.g., Bachman and Coker, 1995, Belknap, 1996, Bell, 1985, Berk et al., 1988, Berk and Loseke, 1981, Buzawa, 1988, Buzawa and Austin, 1993, Buzawa et al., 1995, Buzawa and Buzawa, 2003, Dugan, 2003, Feder, 1997, Finn et al., 2004, Finn and Stalans, 1995, Finn and Stalans, 2002, Homant and Kennedy, 1985, Kane, 1999, Robinson and Chandek, 2000a, Robinson and Chandek, 2000b, Robinson and Chandek, 2000c, Stalans and Finn, 1995, Stalans and Finn, 2000 and Stith, 1990). As in previous research on police behavior, a number of predictors had been investigated, including officer characteristics (e.g., gender, race, education, police experience, martial stress), citizen and situational variables (e.g., gender, race, demeanor, victim preference, injury, cooperativeness, victim/offender relationship, presence of a witness, prior record, type of weapon/force used, evidence strength), and organizational and community factors (e.g., pro-arrest policies, degree of urbanization).