Mandatory Arrest Laws in Domestic Abuse - Do They Actually Help Anyone?

About twenty years ago states starting passing mandatory arrest laws. These laws force officers to arrest someone every time they are called out to a domestic abuse call. Some experts are saying these laws are not helpful at all. The number of murders by abusers is higher in states with mandatory arrest laws than it is in other states. This is a hard issue for advocates, law enforcement, and law makers to agree on.

These types of laws started showing up on books after a 1984 case in federal district court in Connecticut. Twenty-two states in the United States have these types of laws on the books. The police, in a Connecticut town, had been sued by a woman who was brutally assaulted because she said the police failed to adequately protect her from her abuser. She had gone to court and petitioned and was granted a restraining order. (Restraining orders are civil orders issued by the court. The restraining order basically states the alleged abuser may not make contact with the victim. Some retraining orders also include child custody orders and or whether or not the abuser has to relinquish any weapons to the police.) Lawmakers wanted to have more control on how police departments enforced restraining orders and the one way to do that was mandate arrests.

At first the mandatory arrest laws were helpful but the laws did not take into account the intricacies of domestic abuse. Victims figured out that if the called the police their abuser would be arrested, which is not what the victim always wanted to happen. Most victims have emotional, psychological, and financial ties to their abusers. This meant ultimately the victim was deciding the abuser would be arrested not the police. Victims started contacting police less and less because they did not want to have to make that choice.