This longitudinal study, a follow-up to RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN THE QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS DISTRICT COURT, 1995-1997 (ICPSR 3076), examined the relationship between the actions of a district court in eastern Massachusetts and a cohort of men arrested for domestic abuse between February 1995 and March 1996. Using criminal history records, this study followed the criminal behavior of 342 men until December 2004. Some of the variables in Part 1, Arrest Data, include the dates of arrests, dispositions, and restraining orders issued, the arrest charge, disposition of the case, and the relationship between the offender and the victim. In Part 2, Recidivism Data, variables include the age at first arrest, date of arrest and time to subsequent arrests, arrest charge, length of criminal career, and whether the offender is a recidivist.

This study was designed to explore whether civil protection orders were effective in providing safer environments for victims of domestic violence and enhancing their opportunities for escaping violent relationships. The researchers looked at the factors that might influence civil protection orders, such as accessibility to the court process, linkages to public and private services and sources of support, and the criminal record of the victim's abuser, and then examined how courts in three jurisdictions processed civil protection orders. Wilmington, Delaware, Denver, Colorado, and the District of Columbia were chosen as sites because of structural differences among them that were believed to be linked to the effectiveness of civil protection orders. Since these jurisdictions each had different court processes and service models, the researchers expected that these models would produce various results and that these variations might hold implications for improving practices in other jurisdictions. Data were collected through initial and follow-up interviews with women who had filed civil protection orders. The effectiveness of the civil protection orders was measured by the amount of improvement in the quality of the women's lives after the order was in place, versus the extent of problems created by the protection orders. Variables from the survey of women include police involvement at the incident leading to the protection order, the relationship of the petitioner and respondent to the petition prior to the order, history of abuse, the provisions asked for and granted in the order, if a permanent order was not filed for by the petitioner, the reasons why, the court experience, protective measures the petitioner undertook after the order, and how the petitioner's life changed after the order. Case file data were gathered on when the order was filed and issued, contempt motions and hearings, stipulations of the order, and social service referrals. Data on the arrest and conviction history of the petition respondent were also collected.

This study is a replication and extension of an experiment conducted in Minneapolis (MINNEAPOLIS INTERVENTION PROJECT, 1986-1987 [ICPSR 9808]) to test the efficacy of three types of police response to spouse abuse. Three experimental treatments were employed: (1) advising and possibly separating the couple, (2) issuing a citation (an order to appear in court to answer specific charges) to the offender, and (3) arresting the offender. The main focus of the project concerned whether arrest is the most effective law enforcement response for deterring recidivism of spouse abusers. Cases were randomly assigned to one of the three treatments and were followed for at least six months to determine whether recidivism occurred. Measures of recidivism were obtained through official police records and victim interviews. Cases that met the following eligibility guidelines were included in the project: (1) a call involving a misdemeanor offense committed by a male offender aged 18 or over against a female victim aged 18 or over who were spouses, (2) ex-spouses, (3) cohabitants, or (4) ex-cohabitants. Also, both suspect and victim had to be present when officers arrived at the scene. Victims were interviewed twice. The first interview occurred shortly after the "presenting incident," the incident that initiated a call for police assistance. This initial interview focused on episodes of abuse that occurred between the time of the presenting incident and the day of the initial interview. In particular, detailed data were gathered on the nature of physical violence directed against the victim, the history of the victim's marital and cohabitating relationships, the nature of the presenting incident prior to the arrival of the police, the actual actions taken by the police at the scene, post-incident separations and reunions of the victim and the offender, recidivism since the presenting incident, the victim's previous abuse history, alcohol and drug use of both the victim and the offender, and the victim's help-seeking actions. Questions were asked regarding whether the offender had threatened to hurt the victim, actually hurt or tried to hurt the victim, threatened to hurt any member of the family, actually hurt or tried to hurt any member of the family, threatened to damage property, or actually damaged any property. In addition, criminal histories and arrest data for the six-month period subsequent to the presenting incident were collected for offenders. A follow-up interview was conducted approximately six months after the presenting incident and focused primarily on recidivism since the initial interview. Arrest recidivism was defined as any arrest for any subsequent offense by the same offender against the same victim committed within six months of the presenting incident. Victims were asked to estimate how often each type of victimization had occurred and to answer more detailed questions on the first and most recent incidents of victimization.

The purpose of this research was to improve understanding of the conditions under which criminal sanctions do and do not reduce repeat violence between intimate partners. This study involved repeated reading and close inspection of four documents in order to compare and contrast the multivariate analyses reported by John Wooldredge and Amy Thistlethwaite (RECONSIDERING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECIDIVISM: INDIVIDUAL AND CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS OF COURT DISPOSITIONS AND STAKE IN CONFORMITY IN HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO, 1993-1998 [ICPSR 3013]). The first part of this study's design involved the detailed literature review of four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications between the years 1999 and 2005. The second element of the study's design required researchers to gain a detailed understanding of the archived data using the documentation provided by Wooldredge. The third element of the study's secondary analysis research design involved using the identified variables to reproduce the multivariate empirical findings about the effects of sanctions, stakes, and social context on repeat offending. These findings were presented in a series of tables in the four Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite publications. After numerous iterations of reading reports and documentation and exploring alternative measures and methods, researchers produced a report detailing their ability to reproduce Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's descriptive measures. This study's design called for using explicit criteria for determining the extent to which Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's findings could be reproduced. Researchers developed and applied three criteria for making that determination. The first was a simple comparison of the regression coefficients and standard errors. The second criterion was a determination of whether the reproduced results conformed to the direction and statistical significance levels of the original analyses. The third criterion was to apply a statistical test to assess the significance of any differences in the sizes of the original and the reproduced coefficients. The data archived by Wooldredge provided seven dichotomous measures of criminal sanctions (no charges filed, dismissed, acquitted, a treatment program, probation only, jail only, and a combination of probation and jail). Part of the design of this study was to go beyond reproducing Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite's approaches and to reformulate the available measures of criminal sanctions to more directly test the prosecution, conviction, and sentence severity hypotheses. The researchers produced these tests by constructing three new measures of criminal sanctions (prosecution, conviction, and sanction severity) and testing each of them in separate multivariate models. The Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) data file contains 206 cases and 35 variables. The Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) data file contains 47 cases and 12 variables. The variables in Part 1 (Hamilton County, Ohio, Census Tract Data) include a census tract indicator, median household income of tract, several proportions such as number of college graduates in the tract and corresponding Z-scores, a regression factor score for analysis 1, a socio-economic factor, a census tract number for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a Cincinnati neighborhoods indicator. Variables in Part 2 (Neighborhood Data) include a neighborhood indicator, average age in the neighborhood, demographic proportions such as proportion male in the neighborhood and proportion of college graduates in the neighborhood, and a social class factor.

The study set out to test the question of whether more efficacious outcomes would be gained the closer that a second response by police officers occurs to an actual domestic violence event. Researchers conducted a randomized experiment in which households that reported a domestic incident to the police were assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (a) second responders were dispatched to the crime scene within 24 hours, (b) second responders visited victims' homes one week after the call for service, or (c) no second response occurred. Beginning January 1, 2005, and continuing through December 3, 2005, incidents reported to the Redlands Police Department were reviewed each morning by a research assistant to determine whether the incidents involved intimate partners. Cases were determined to be eligible if the incident was coded as a misdemeanor or felony battery of a spouse or intimate partner. Eighty-two percent of the victims were females. For designated incidents, a team of officers, including a trained female domestic violence detective, visited households within either twenty-four hours or seven days of a domestic complaint. A written protocol guided the officer or officers making home visits. Officers also asked the victim a series of questions about her relationship with the abuser, history of abuse, and the presence of children and weapons in the home. In Part 1 (Home Visit Data), six months after the reporting date of the last incident in the study, Redlands Police crime analysis officers wrote a software program to search their database to determine if any new incidents had been reported. For Part 2 (New Incident Data), the search returned any cases associated with the same victim in the trigger incident. For any new incidents identified, information was collected on the date, charge, and identity of the perpetrator. Six months following the trigger incident, research staff attempted to interview victims about any new incidents of abuse that might have occurred. These interview attempts were made by telephone. In cases where the victim could not be reached by phone, an incentive letter was sent to the victim's home, offering a $50 stipend to call the research offices. Part 1 (Home Visit Data) contains 345 cases while Part 2 (New Incident Data) contains 344 cases. The discrepancy in the final number across the two parts is due to cases randomized into the sample that turned out to be ineligible or had been assigned previously from another incident. Part 1 (Home Visit Data) contains 63 variables including basic administrative variables such as date(s) of contact and group assignment. There are also variables related to the victim and the perpetrator such as their relationship, whether the perpetrator was arrested during the incident, and whether the perpetrator was present during the interview. Victims were also asked a series of questions as to whether the perpetrator did such things as hit, push, or threatened the victim. Part 2 (New Incident Data) contains 68 variables including dates and charges of previous incidents as well as basic administrative and demographic variables.

The goal of this study was to identify factors that influence whether city misdemeanor domestic violence cases in which batterers are arrested by police result in dismissals, acquittals, or convictions in the courts, and how these cases are processed. The researchers sought to examine factors that influence court officials' decision-making in domestic violence cases, as well as factors that influence victim and witness reluctance in bringing batterers to successful adjudication. In Part 1 researchers merged pretrial services data with information from police and prosecutors' reports in the urban area under study to answer the following questions: (1) What is the rate of dismissals, acquittals, and convictions for misdemeanor court cases and what are the conditions of these sentences? (2) What factors in court cases are significantly related to whether the disposition is a dismissal, acquittal, or conviction, and how are these cases processed? In Part 2, judges, prosecutors, and public defenders were asked detailed questions about their level of knowledge about, attitudes toward, and self-reported behaviors regarding the processing of domestic violence cases to find out: (1) What roles do legal and extra-legal factors play in decision-makers' self-reported behaviors and attitudes? (2) How do decision-makers rate victim advocate and batterer treatment programs? (3) How do court professionals view the victim's role in the court process? and (4) To what degree do court professionals report victim-blaming attitudes and experiences? For Part 3 researchers used a stratified random sample to select court cases of misdemeanor domestic violence that would be transcribed and used for a content analysis to examine: (1) Who speaks in court and how? and (2) What is considered relevant by different court players? In Parts 4-103 victim surveys and interviews were administered to learn about battered women's experiences in both their personal lives and the criminal processing system. Researchers sought to answer the following questions: (1) How do victim/witnesses perceive their role in the prosecution of their abusers? (2) What factors inhibit them from pursuing prosecution? (3) What factors might help them pursue prosecution? and (4) How consistent are the victims'/witnesses' demographic and psychological profiles with existing research in this area? Domestic violence victims attending arraignment between January 1 and December 31 of 1997 were asked to complete surveys to identify their concerns about testifying against their partners and to evaluate the effectiveness of the court system in dealing with domestic violence cases (Part 4). The disposition of each case was subsequently determined by a research team member's examination of defendants' case files and/or court computer files. Upon case closure victims who had both completed a survey and indicated a willingness to be interviewed were contacted to participate in an interview (Parts 5-103). Variables in Part 1, Pretrial Services Data, include prior criminal history, current charges, case disposition, sentence, victim testimony, police testimony, victim's demeanor at trial, judge's conduct, type of abuse involved, weapons used, injuries sustained, and type of evidence available for trial. Demographic variables include age, sex, and race of defendants, victims, prosecutors, and judges. In Part 2, Professional Survey Data, respondents were asked about their tolerance for victims and offenders who appeared in court more than once, actions taken when substance abuse was involved, the importance of injuries in making a decision, attitudes toward battered women, the role of victim advocates and the police, views on restraining orders, and opinion on whether arrest is a deterrent. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, marital status, and years of professional experience. Variables in Part 3, Court Transcript Data, include number and type of charges, pleas, reasons for dismissals,

The researchers sought to add to the incipient literature on randomized studies of batterer treatment, by conducting an experimental study that compared batterers assigned to treatment to batterers assigned to a community service program irrelevant to the problem of violence. The study was conducted using a true experimental design and consisted of 376 spousal assault cases drawn from the Kings County (New York) Criminal Court which were adjudicated between February 19, 1995, and March 1, 1996. Batterers were mandated to attend a 40-hour batterer treatment program or to complete 40 hours of community service. The random assignment was made at sentencing, after all parties (judge, prosecutor, and defense) had agreed that batterer treatment was appropriate, the defendant agreed to treatment and was accepted by the Alternatives to Violence (ATV) program, and the program was available based on the random assignment process. Interviews were also conducted with both the batterer and the victim at sentencing as well as 6 months post-sentence and 12 months post-sentence. These interviews collected data in areas regarding demographics (first interview only), recidivism, beliefs about domestic violence, conflict management strategies, locus of control, and for victims, self esteem. Administrative records were also used to obtain data regarding any new crimes committed.

The Metro-Dade project replicated an earlier study of domestic violence, the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (SPECIFIC DETERRENT EFFECTS OF ARREST FOR DOMESTIC ASSAULT: MINNEAPOLIS, 1981-1982 [ICPSR 8250]), which was conducted by the Police Foundation with a grant from the National Institute of Justice. The Metro-Dade study employed a research design that tested the relative effectiveness of various combinations of treatments that were randomly assigned in two stages. Initially, eligible spouse battery cases were assigned to either an arrest or a nonarrest condition. Later, cases were assigned either to receive or not to receive a follow-up investigation and victim counseling from a detective working with the Safe Streets Unit (SSU), a unit that deals specifically with domestic violence. Given the various treatment conditions employed, three types of dependent variables were examined: (1) prevalence--the proportion of suspects who engaged in repeat incidents, (2) incidence--the frequency with which repeat incidents occurred, and (3) "time to failure"--the interval between the presenting incident and subsequent incidents. Initial interviews were conducted with victims soon after the presenting incident, and follow-up interviews were attempted six months later. The interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish. The interview questions requested detailed background information about the suspect, victim, and any family members living with the victim at the time of the interview, including age, gender, and marital and employment status. Parallel sets of employment and education questions were asked about the victim and the suspect. Additionally, the interview questionnaire was designed to collect information on (1) the history of the victim's relationship with the suspect, (2) the nature of the presenting incident, including physical violence, property damage, and threats, (3) causes of the presenting incident, including the use of alcohol and drugs by both the victim and the offender, (4) actions taken by the police when they arrived on the scene, (5) the victim's evaluation of the services rendered by the police on the scene, (6) the nature of the follow-up contact by a detective from the Safe Street Unit and an evaluation of the services provided, (7) the victim's history of abuse by the offender, and (8) the nature of subsequent abuse since the presenting incident. Data for Parts 1 and 2 are self-reported data, obtained from interviews with victims. Part 4 consists of data recorded on Domestic Violence Continuation Report forms, indicating subsequent assaults or domestic disputes, and Part 5 contains criminal history data on suspects from arrest reports, indicating a subsequent arrest. The police report of the incident and information on the type of randomized treatment assigned to each case is given in Part 6.

The purpose of this study was to provide a definitive test of whether batterer programs and varying intensities of judicial monitoring reduce reoffending among domestic violence offenders. Study enrollment took place between July 23, 2002, through February 27, 2004. In Part 1, Batterer Program Experiment Data, convicted male domestic violence offenders from court parts AP10 (Pretrial Appearances) or TAP2 (Trials) of the Bronx Misdemeanor Domestic Violence Court were randomly assigned into one of four experimental conditions. The four conditions were batterer program plus monthly judicial monitoring (n = 102), batterer program plus graduated monitoring (n = 100), monthly monitoring only (n = 109), and graduated monitoring only (n = 109). Defendants assigned to a batterer program completed either the Domestic Violence Accountability Program (DVAP) run by Safe Horizon or the Men's Choices Program run by the Fordham Tremont Community Mental Health Center. The offenders were tracked for at least 12 months after sentencing, and for up to 18 months for most of the men, to determine whether they fulfilled the conditions of their sentence, were rearrested for domestic violence, or were reported by the victim to have engaged in new incidents of abuse. Using each offender's New York State criminal identification number, complete criminal record files, including prior criminal history and recidivism, were obtained from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). Victims were interviewed about new domestic incidents committed within one year of sentencing. In Part 2, Monitoring Experiment Data, a quasi-experimental study using propensity score matching compared recidivism outcomes between the randomized offenders in Part 1 and a control group of conditional discharge (CD) offenders convicted of identical offenses, but who, as a result of the normal sentencing process, received neither a batterer program nor any form of monitoring. The propensity score predicted the probability of inclusion in the randomized trial (Part 1) sample, based not on actual membership in that sample, but on the statistical probability of membership in it, as computed from the observed set of background characteristics. Each offender in the randomized trial was then matched to the offender in the CD only group with the nearest propensity score. Sometimes multiple offenders from the the initial trial were matched to the same CD only offender. Variables in both Part 1 and Part 2 of the data set include demographic variables for both the defendants and victims, defendant arrest history, current sentence, assignment to a batterer program, type of judicial monitoring, and victim reports of new incidents of violence after sentencing.