Citation

Binder A, Meeker JW. J. Crim. Justice 1988; 16(4): 347-358.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1988, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0047-2352(88)90021-9

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Newspapers, magazines, and television news reports recently have presented features indicating that police departments throughout the United States have adopted arrest as the primary mode of intervention in cases of misdemeanor wife abuse. There have been several recent societal events that have motivated the police to move in that direction, the most significant of which may be the research results reported by Sherman and Berk. But those results are not convincing enough to a critical reviewer to provide the kind of anchoring one expects in a force motivating national change. That failure to convince stems from problems of external validity, aberrations that occurred in the execution of the research, questionable statistical interpretations, and a failure to consider a broad array of related social effects produced by the arrest process.