Domestic Violence

Each year law enforcement system tries to come up with a new strategy to protect domestic violence

According to Family Tree help group, domestic violence is a pattern of coercive control in an intimate relationship, which can be characterized by isolating and controlling behaviors, manipulation and intimidation to create an atmosphere of fear. Domestic violence occurs in all socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, age groups, sexual orientations, ethnicities, and cultures. There are laws to help protect domestic violence victims, but some victims feel as if the police aren't doing enough to protect them. So the question remains, is our law enforcement system doing enough to protect domestic violence victims?

"Under Wisconsin state statute 968.075, local police must arrest domestic violence suspects regardless of the victim's cooperation (p.39)". The statute states that departments also must have written policies on how to investigate domestic violence. If there is a domestic violence call in the state of Wisconsin, the police have to make an arrest to the primary physical aggressor. Wisconsin is among 21 states with a mandatory arrest law. Wisconsin's law took effect in 1989 and was updated in 2006, which requires officers to make an arrest in a domestic violence case if they believe abuse is likely to continue or if there is physical injury.

In addition to mandatory arrest, Wisconsin statutes require every law enforcement agency to have a written policy that spells out how they respond to domestic violence calls. The laws list guidelines for what those policies must address, including an explanation of the mandatory arrest law and a statement that the arrest cannot be based on the cooperation of the victim. Local policies also must lay out a procedure for notifying the victim about when the perpetrator will be released from jail, among other things. But the local departments are not required to submit their policies to any state agency for review and neither the state Department of Justice nor the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence knows how many departments have actually written one.

Every state does not have the mandatory arrest law for domestic violence. In the state of New York, the police can assist you with finding a safe place away from the violence, inform you about how the court can help protect you from the violence, assist you in getting necessary belongings from your home, provide you with copies of police reports about the violence, and file a complaint in criminal court and tell you where your local criminal and family courts are located. The courts can help as well, if the person who has harmed or threatened the victim is a relative by blood or marriage, someone the victim has a child with, and then the victim can take them to family or criminal court, or even both.

Every state does try to help victims who are involved in a domestic violence relationship. The justice system makes sure to inform the victims of the resources that are out there. Also the police do inform the victims that there is a very real chance that more violence will occur and that it is most likely to happen within the next six months. Even though the victim can't control the behavior of the offender, the police want the victims to concentrate on what they can control. The police do try to help the victims create a vision of safety and then work backwards to determine how that vision can become reality.

The courts and the justice system also have different ways they try to help the victims. They have what is called a restraining order, even known as a civil protective order. There are two different types of restraining orders: there is civil harassment and domestic violence. In order to get a domestic violence restraining order, there must be a domestic relationship between the victim and the person to be restrained. Domestic relationships involve people who are considered to have been or currently married to each other, have been or currently dating each other, have been or currently lived together in an intimate relationship, have a child in common, are related to each other by blood within the second degree (i.e., parent, sibling, grandparent), and are related by marriage (i.e., mother-in-law, brother-in-law). There must be recent physical violence within the past 30 days or a threat of imminent physical violence before the court will issued a temporary restraining order. Once a temporary restraining order is issued, there will be a court date to come in about two weeks and from that court date the judge will decide if a restraining order will be issued and for how long. You can get a domestic restraining order for up to four years. When this occurs the victims are sometimes at risk because the receiver/victimizer can avoid the restraining orders which will cause the victim to reapply or the courts may grant an extension to allow more time to actually serve the victimizer.

Now according to TK Logan, PHD, and Robert Walker, at the University of Kentucky, the restraining orders are here to help but some victims and law enforcements agents may think that this protective order is just a piece of paper. According to the Department of Justice, women are 84 percent of spouse victims and 86 percent of victims of abuse from an intimate partner. 75 percent of people who commit family violence are males. There was a study done in the Journal of General Internal Medicine which offers some insight into the problem. The study was done over four years. During the study, 993 female victims of domestic abuse generated 3,246 related police incidents. Of these women, about 80 percent sought assistance at an emergency department,