ASU Research E-Magazine: Dangerously Equal

Imagine being at a heavyweight boxing match. You sit in the audience to watch the two fighters. There’s a boxing ring, a defined time limit, a referee to enforce the rules, and judges to decide the victor. The referee does his best to insure a fair fight. The judges base their decision on which fighter hits best and hits hardest.

Now picture a man and a woman fighting, sometimes with weapons. There are no rules. Even if there were, there is no referee. The only decisions will be who goes to jail and who goes to the hospital. There is no such thing as a fair fight. You’ve just caught a glimpse of woman battering.

Lynne Norris studied woman battering and its effects to earn a master’s degree in justice studies from Arizona State University. In fact, Norris wrote her thesis on one effect in particular: she focused on victims, specifically women, who were arrested and convicted of domestic violence offenses.

Many communities have adopted policies that mandate an arrest in cases of domestic violence. They use domestic violence research results as justification. Norris looked at the development of mandatory arrest policies. She interviewed 10 women in Phoenix, Ariz. Each had been arrested and convicted of domestic violence offenses.

Norris sitting on steps
“We went from nobody being arrested to anybody being arrested.”—Lynne Norris

Norris says that mandatory arrest policies across the country are based on an experiment performed in Minneapolis, Minn., in 1984. Results of that work seemed to prove that arrest did deter men from beating women. Closer examination of the study uncovered problems with how the experiment was conducted. As a result, the National Institute of Justice funded six new studies to determine if the findings of the Minneapolis Experiment could be replicated.

The findings were mixed. Results from three studies did not support the Minneapolis idea that arrest can deter future assaults. Another found that mandatory arrest does not place women in greater danger, but it also does not stop woman battering. The fifth study showed that mandatory arrest was neither more effective nor less effective than any other deterrent strategy used in that city. Results from the last experiment are still not available.

Norris has strong opinions about mandatory arrest. Not only is it an ineffective deterrent to future incidents of woman battering, she says it has backlashed on women. The gender-neutral language of Phoenix’s mandatory arrest policy has resulted in women being arrested and convicted for domestic violence crimes. Even when the women themselves are the victims.

“Feminists fought long and hard to get the laws on the books. Then they had to fight long and hard to get them enforced,” Norris says. “The law has come full circle. We went from nobody being arrested to anybody being arrested.”

In her study, Norris explores police statistics about who is being arrested for domestic violence offenses. Unpublished data from the Phoenix Police Department show that women are being arrested in greater numbers. In 1991, women accounted for 13 percent of the field arrests for domestic violence offenses. In 1992, this figure rose to 18 percent. The total number of field arrests decreased in 1993, but women still accounted for 18 percent of all arrests.

After Norris received her master’s degree, she made follow-up contact with some of the women she interviewed. One woman’s husband had been arrested four times since her interview. His fourth arrest was for attempted murder. The woman told Norris that she had heard he was going to be let out of jail and the charges were going to be dropped.

Another woman’s husband had visitation rights with his child, but brought the child back before the end of his visitation period. The woman was unprepared to take the child at that time. He called the police and complained that she was being combative. The police arrested her. Now she is afraid that she might lose her job, her children, and her home.

“There are two values to my thesis,” Norris says. “Number one, I’ve established the need for more research. Number two, the consequences of arrest. Through nobody’s fault, the consequences have been greater for the women because men have caught on that arrest is another way they can control [women].”

In traditional Socratic fashion, the title of Norris’ thesis begins with a question: “Dangerously Equal or Equally Dangerous? A Comparison of Men’s and Women’s Violence in Intimate Relationships.” In the clearly defined world of boxing, the answer might be simple.—Stephanie Mabee