The Arrest Policy of DV Perpetrators in the American Criminal Justice

As a Legal Response to the Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

The legal responses to domestic violence (hereinafter DV) in the States drastically changed from no-intervention to pro-arrest policy in the last quarter of the 20th century. The feminist movement since the 1970s, Minneapolis Experiment in 1984 and the following experimental projects affected very much the formation of judicial policy to confront DV. Epoch-making in this stream was the legislation of the Violence Against Women Act in 1994.
The arrest of DV perpetrators, though its deterrent effect having been questioned, has different meanings for victims, investigators and judges respectively. They have practical interests to pursue, 'safety' for victims, 'successful prosecution' for investigators and 'deterrent to crime' for judges. The pro-arrest policy is the result of politics with contestation and coordination of these interests. In the process of such politics, the theory of 'gender' functions to analyze power structures of the society. It also highlights the subordination of 'personal life' to 'public structure' given the priority in the judicial system. The purpose of this paper is to overview the arrest policy of DV perpetrators as the response to 'gender-based violence' and to find some key to overcome the coercion of gender structure embedded in judicial process.