WASHINGTON — A University of Maryland criminology professor whose startling findings on repeated domestic violence nearly 10 years ago resulted in mandatory arrest laws for offenders in 15 states and the District of Columbia, now says his further studies show that arresting attackers often does more harm than good for the victims of domestic violence.
The five-year study conducted by Lawrence W. Sherman, a criminology professor at the University of Maryland and president of the Crime Control Institute, was commissioned by the Justice Department and released recently by the crime institute in Washington.
The new study challenges Sherman's own 1983 findings, which supported the prevailing theory among criminologists that the best way to protect battered women from further violence is to arrest attackers.
Sherman's more recent and extensive findings show that mandatory arrests may exacerbate domestic battery, and he has begun a call for the repeal of mandatory arrest laws.
"This is not a matter of ideology," said Sherman, whose new study has aroused the ire of women's groups across the country.
"We can't say for sure that mandatory arrests help battered women," he said. "But we can say for sure that in some cases it's going to backfire, especially among the unemployed."
Sherman said it now appears mandatory arrest laws "work for employed whites and make it worse for unemployed blacks. In places like (Washington) D.C. with its high rate of unemployment, a mandatory arrest policy is like throwing oil on the flames."
BACKGROUND: Nearly 10% of all homicides in the United States are committed by spouses, according to Linda E. Saltzman, a criminologist who specializes in family violence for the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
One out of every three women murdered in the United States is killed by a husband or boyfriend, says Saltzman. Only 4% of the men murdered in the United States are killed by their wives or girlfriends.
Sherman's 1983 study, based on 328 cases of domestic violence in Minneapolis, spurred Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia to pass mandatory arrest laws for domestic violence offenders.
Some of these states call for mandatory arrests only when the offender violates a restraining order. Others mandate the arrest of offenders any time an officer deems probable cause that a misdemeanor has been committed.
