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Abstract
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For the past decade, research on police response to woman battering has focused on the effectiveness of arrest. Whatever the effect of arrest, both victims and criminal justice actors stand to benefit from police referrals to community and criminal justice services. In addition to the potential for shelters and other programs to enhance a woman's ability to leave a dangerous relationship, prior research has found that battered women well connected with community referrals are more willing to testify against their batterers. From a survey completed by 324 law enforcement officers in a large Mid-western metropolis, this study addresses (1) the number of police referrals, (2) the types of police referrals, and (3) how officers' personal characteristics are related to the referrals they give.
VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The goal of this study by Belknap and McCall was to identify the number and types of referrals police make in woman battering situations and to examine how police officers' personal characteristics are related to the referrals they give.
METHODOLOGY:
The authors employed a quasi-experimental survey design in this study. The police officers interviewed in this study were chosen nonrandomly from one county and one city police department in a large Midwestern metropolitan area in December 1987. There were a total of 324 respondents. Officers in the city department were administered questionnaires by the researcher and officers in the county department were administered questionnaires by a community service. Ninety-five percent of the officers in the city department completed the questionnaire and 100% of the officers in the county department completed the questionnaire. This sample of respondents was not representative of police officers nationwide. The questionnaire obtained information of each officer's attitudes and behavior in woman battering incidents as well as their demographic characteristics, rank, experience, and whether the officer worked the morning, afternoon, or evening shift. Specifically, the officers were asked to name the number and type of referrals they made to women when they responded to domestic disturbance calls. The authors were interested in the number and type of police referrals made in woman battering situations as well as how the officer's personal characteristics affected the referrals they report giving. It should be noted that the researchers only gathered information about what officers said they commonly do with regard to these referrals. No independent measure of what officers actually did was used. The researchers used both bivariate and multivariate Probit techniques to analyze the data.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
Results showed that few officers said they refer women to shelters all of the time although almost all officers referred women to shelters occasionally. Only a small fraction of officers referred men to counseling programs for batterers all of the time. Half of the officers reported never referring men to such counseling programs. The most popular referral was a women's hot line followed, respectively, by the private complaint program, shelter, and clergy. Overall, the researchers found that ignorance of the types and number of helping agencies for battered women was common among the officers questioned. Regarding the number of referrals made for each call, 25% reported never making referrals, 40% reported making one referral, 20% reported making 2 referrals, 10% reported making 3 referrals, and 3% reported making 4-5 referrals. The average number of referrals made by officers in the sample was 1.21 per domestic disturbance call.
Bivariate analysis showed that officers with 15 or more years of experience were significantly more likely to say that they usually refer battered women to shelters. In addition, officers working the morning and afternoon shifts were significantly more likely to report that they usually refer women to shelters. Results also showed that demographic characteristics of the officers were not significantly related to referring men to counseling programs.
Multivariate analysis showed that higher ranking officers and officers with more education were significantly more likely to make a greater number of referrals in battering situations. Departmental affiliation affected the type of referral. County officers were significantly more likely to refer women to religious counseling, nonreligious counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous, and welfare. Officers age, education, and shift worked was also significantly associated with the type of referrals made. Older officers were more likely to refer women to the private complaint line while more educated officers were more likely to refer women to the courts and the womens' hotline. Officers who work the evening shift were more likely to refer men to Alcoholics Anonymous. The researchers reported that this is likely an artifact of citizens drinking more at night than in the day.
AUTHORS' RECOMMENDATIONS:
The authors recommended that police training and policy encourage more officers to make a wider range of referral and to use these referrals more consistently. The authors also recommended that researchers incorporate a more comprehensive view of police response that includes not just the decision to refer and/or the decision to arrest, but the types of referrals made. They also suggested that more research be conducted on the relationship between officers' demographic characteristics and their referrals to substantiate their findings.
EVALUATION:
The referrals police make to battering victims is obviously a very important issue. Police referrals are often a vital link between service organizations and victims. Thus, the importance of this study cannot be underestimated. However, like many researchers investigating this issue the authors run into problems concerning the representativeness of their sample and, ultimately, the generalizability of their findings. In fact, the biggest weakness of this study is that the findings are not generalizable to all police officers. The use of stratified random sampling could have gone a long way towards solving this problem. In some sense, however, this is a necessary flaw because of the regional variation in the services offered. In order to analyze specific referrals made by police, the researcher is faced with choosing a regional sample in which specific referrals can be accurately described or choosing a multiregional sample where referrals must be analyzed in more abstract terms. Future researchers need to consider how to construct suitable typologies of services offered to overcome these problems of regional variation and, ultimately, better insure the generalizability of their findings.
(CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
Spouse Abuse Intervention
Spouse Abuse Offender
Spouse Abuse Victim
Domestic Violence Intervention
Domestic Violence Offender
Domestic Violence Victim
Partner Violence
Violence Against Women
Female Victim
Male Offender
Male Violence
Adult Female
Adult Male
Adult Offender
Adult Victim
Adult Violence
Law Enforcement Intervention
Law Enforcement Response
Law Enforcement
Police Referral
Police Intervention
Police Response |