Doctoral Dissertation Research: Governing Domestic Violence: Investigating the Effects of Arrest and Prosecution Practice on the Intimate Violence of Masculine Subjects

本研究将研究强制逮捕和不放弃起诉政策对国内施暴者的影响。这项研究的目的是了解包括逮捕和起诉在内的做法如何影响施暴者对虐待的理解和表现。过去的研究完全从威慑的角度来探讨这一主题，采用实验性和半实验性设计来测试逮捕和/或起诉是否比其他类型的干预措施更少地预测未来的暴力报告。根据已完成的田野调查发现，警察和辩护律师为了让家庭殴打嫌疑人更容易合作，将虐待行为最小化并为其辩护，本研究探索了四个假设：(1)施暴者对虐待的理解不会因逮捕和起诉而改变；(2)警察和辩护律师所采用的做法加强了施暴者对虐待的理解；(3)施暴者认为逮捕和起诉是对他们男子气概的挑战；(4)男性在逮捕和起诉后会转向新的强制策略，以重新证明他们的男子气概。这些假设将通过对30名国内殴打轻罪嫌疑人的半结构化采访进行调查。

This research will study the effects of mandatory arrest and no-drop prosecution policies on domestic batterers. The objective of this study is to understand how the practices comprising arrest and prosecution shape perpetrators' understanding and performance of abuse. Past research has approached this topic exclusively from a deterrence perspective, employing experimental and quasi-experimental designs to test whether arrest and/or prosecution predict less reports of future violence than other types of interventions. Drawing from completed fieldwork which has found that police officers and defense attorneys minimize and justify abuse in order to make domestic battery suspects easier to work with, this research explores four hypotheses: (1) batterers' understanding of abuse is not changed by arrest and prosecution; (2) the practices employed by police officers and defense attorneys reinforce perpetrators' understanding of abuse; (3) batterers perceive arrest and prosecution as challenges to their masculinity; and (4) men will turn to new coercive tactics following arrest and prosecution in order to reassert their masculinity. These hypotheses will be investigated through semi-structured interviews with 30 misdemeanor domestic battery suspects.