Mandatory Arrest

A PRIVATE MATTER MINIMIZED

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injuries in women, and domestic violence injuries are as serious as those inflicted in violent felony crimes. Yet even now, most states minimize the seriousness of domestic violence crimes, classifying them as only misdemeanors unless someone is killed or very seriously injured.

In practice, society traditionally refused to treat domestic violence as a crime, treating it instead as a private matter, best left to the parties themselves. With little known about the prevalence, causes, or serious effects of domestic violence, and with laws and promotion practices that gave police no support to aggressively intervene, police also were reluctant to get involved in domestic violence cases. Police were not alone in their reluctance. Until recently, many courts were reluctant to divorce a couple, particularly if they had minor children, “merely” because the husband was beating his wife. Yet over half of women's divorce cases from colonial times to the present have involved domestic violence. However, because domestic violence typically escalates when a couple separates, even a divorce often did not stop the violence. Little help was available to battered women before the 1970s, when battered women's shelters emerged and states began adopting domestic violence laws providing for civil orders of protection and better police protection. As with the criminal laws, most police and courts were slow to enforce the new laws, although a minority were leaders in seeking to protect victims of domestic violence and were critical of other laws that prevented police from arresting without a warrant for misdemeanor crimes.