Police play a vital role in domestic violence. This is true because police are often the first contact when women report an incident of domestic abuse. How police respond is crucial in assisting women in abusive relationships. It is important to realize that the criminal justice system is predominately dominated by men, and the offenders are also normally men, while the victims are often women. The significance of these gendered divisions is that the criminal justice system has largely been based on a system of patriarchal beliefs, and the abusive actions by men also reflect the patriarchal society in which we live. In order to understand the police response to domestic abuse over the last few decades, it is important to first understand the history and importance of domestic abuse.
Domestic violence against women is very much prevalent in today's society. It is a fact that women's greatest risk of assault is from their intimate partners. Women are more likely to be injured, attacked, raped or killed by a current or former intimate partner than by anyone else (Brown 1994, 41). Domestic violence is often referred to as “spouse abuse”, however a term such as this, “…obscures the gendered nature of abuse. The focus becomes criminal activity between spouses rather than the systemic, gender-related aspect of women's experience”(Minaker 2001, 103).
In this paper, I refer to the term domestic violence or domestic abuse, however what I am specifically referring to is really domestic violence against women, because this more accurately reflects the problem of systemic violence against women in intimate relationships. Domestic violence against women can be defined as, “any physical, psychological, or emotional abuse by an intimate against his female partner, regardless of whether she is a wife, ex-wife, girlfriend or friend” (Daniels 1997, 23). Domestic does not only refer to violence that occurs within the home, but any violence that occurs in a relationship between two people (Daniels 1997, 23).
Some of the history surrounding the abuse of women begins with the English Common Law that stated it was acceptable for a man to beat his wife with a whip or stick as long as it was no bigger than the width of his thumb. Historically, man's power and domination over his wife was legitimized. This enabled men to use violence and threats of violence to control her, as women at that time were seen as the property of their husbands (Brown 1994, 14) and were not even considered a “person” under the law until the suffragette movement in the early twentieth century (Hick 2002, 150). Women were considered mentally and even morally inferior to men (Buzawa & Buzawa 1992, 3), and this view persisted among men for years, and continues among many men today.
In the early 1970's, many women's movements aimed at eliminating violence against women were formed. Women were becoming more aware of domestic assault, and how common it was among other women. The battered women's movement helped initiate changes in public policy responses to violence against women, including that of domestic (Brown 1994, 102). Women also advocated for this abuse to be recognized by the criminal justice system as a crime. However, despite these efforts from women's movements, violence against women remained high (Brown 1994, 104). When examining violence against women, including that within the home, we must examine the power inequalities between men and women. “A variety of scholars have suggested that violence functions as a mechanism of social control of women and serves to reproduce and maintain the status quo of male dominance and female subordination” (Brown 1994, 6). Gender-related roles are learned and transmitted from generation to generation within society, and much of this role expectation that a woman should be subordinate to her husband transpires in the home (Brown 1994, 7).
Since the commencement of many movements on behalf of violence against women, domestic violence has continued to be a common occurrence in many homes. According to research, approximately 34% of Canadian women have been the victim of domestic assault (Larkin & McKenna 2002, 41). Often, domestic violence escalates to much more serious actions, including murder. From 1974 to 1992, a married woman was nine times more likely to be murdered by her partner than by a complete stranger (Hick 2002, 151). This number does not account for those who were not married and were killed by their partner. It is estimated that in Ontario alone, that out of 1206 women that were killed between 1974 and 1994, that 76% were killed by an intimate (or former) partner (Larkin & McKenna 2002, 127).
Many women have tried to flee abusive relationships, although even when women are successful at separating from their abusive partner, many of these men refuse to allow these women to move on with their lives. These men feel they need to continue to maintain control of these women, just as they had through violence in their relationship, and will stalk these women. Stalking can include such things as repeated unwanted calling, verbal or written threats, following the victim, etc…. This behavior causes women to become very fearful, and limits their daily participation in life (Atwell 2002, 83). However, often stalking escalates into dangerous and violent behavior (Feder 1999, 33). Statistics show that over one million women in the United States over 18 years of age are stalked by men annually (Atwell 2002, 83). Women are in fact most at risk to severe violence and murder by their partners immediately following their separation from the abusive partner (Hick 2002, 151), when their partner feels like they are losing control the most.
