Female Victims of Partner Versus Nonpartner Violence: Experiences with the Criminal Justice System

Reviewed by
Priscilla Schulz, LCSW
from an article of the same title by:
Christina A. Byrne, Dean G. Kilpatrick, Medical University of South Carolina
Susan S. Howley,
David Beatty, National Center for Victims of Crime

Published: Criminal Justice and Behavior, V. 26 (3),
275-292, 1999

What is the purpose of this study?
Female victims of intimate partner violence face special problems. Besides the fear of retaliatory violence by partners when victims report abuse to the police, these women also experience attitudes and behaviors by criminal justice system personnel that blame them for the abuse and that demonstrate a reluctance to take such incidents seriously. Some examples are: police refusing to arrest batterers or to gather sufficient evidence in a domestic violence crime; prosecutors who are unwilling to file charges or pursue strict sentences against abusive men; judges dismissing cases in which a restraining order has been violated. In the past decade, states have passed laws to both expand and better protect victim's rights. Examples of victims' rights that are part of many states' legislation include victim's right to be notified of the status of the case, to receive restitution, to be present for legal proceedings, and to be heard by the court regarding the effects of the crime on his/her life. The present study
Empirically examines the level of satisfaction with the criminal justice system of female victims of male violence

Compares victims of intimate partner violence with victims of nonpartner violence in terms of their level of satisfaction with the criminal justice system

Explores whether victims' satisfaction with the criminal justice system is affected by the strength or weakness of states' victims' rights laws.
What makes victims' rights legislation weak or strong?
Criteria that the present study used to determine relative strength of victims' rights legislation in different states were:
Comprehensiveness of the statute regarding each aspect of victims' rights
The range of types of victims the statute covers
Whether provisions of the statute have constitutional vs. statutory status, and whether provisions are mandatory vs. discretionary
The specificity of language in the statute. For example, some legislation gives specific directives about types and means of delivery of services, persons responsible to deliver services as well as deadlines by which they must occur to be in compliance. Weaker legislation only states what victims are entitled to with few details and little language of enforcement.
Thirty-one states currently have victims' rights legislation. All were evaluated and ranked by strength of their victims' rights laws. Four were selected to use in the study, two from the top 25% (strong) and two from the bottom 25% (weak).How did the study determine satisfaction with the criminal justice system?

The Department of Corrections and Crime Victims' Compensation records from the four chosen states provided names of potential study participants. From this initial group, 1,312 individuals participated in a 40-minute telephone interview in which the Crime Victims' Survey and the Victim Satisfaction Scale (VSS) were administered by trained interviewers. These measures determined which participants were victims of partner violence and which were not. In addition, they assessed crime victims' experiences and degree of satisfaction with different aspects and personnel of the criminal justice system. Analyses then compared responses of victims of intimate partner violence with responses of victims of violent assaults whose assailants had not been intimate partners.

What were the study's findings?
Statistically significant differences emerged between victims of partner vs. nonpartner violence in terms of their satisfaction with the criminal justice system, including:
Police: Victims of partner violence were less likely to report that police officers:
Demonstrated an interest in victims' feelings
Tried to gather necessary evidence at the crime scene.
Prosecutors: Most differences between the groups were in their experiences with prosecutors.
Victims of partner violence were less likely to believe their opinion had been taken into account when decisions about the cases were made.
Victims of partner violence were less likely to report that the prosecutor's office encouraged them to attend relevant hearings (i.e., sentencing, grand jury).
Perpetrators of partner violence were more likely to have been allowed by prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser crime.
Judges: No significant differences were found. However, victims of partner violence tended to be less satisfied with the sentences given their assailants than victims of nonpartner violence.

Victim advocates: No significant differences were found.

Victims' rights legislation: The strength or weakness of states' victims' rights legislation affected satisfaction with the criminal justice system. In weak protection states, victims of partner violence were less satisfied with their criminal justice system involvement than victims of nonpartner violence. However, there were no significant differences in satisfaction between victims of partner and nonpartner violence in strong victim protection states.
What are the implications of this study?
Weak protection of victims' rights may disproportionately hamper victims of intimate partner violence relative to victims of nonpartner violence. Weak victims' rights protection perpetuates victim-blaming attitudes and inadvertently sends a message of social acceptance of the violence to its perpetrators.

Suggested improvements to the criminal justice system include:
  • Efforts to strengthen victim protection while prosecution is pending
  • Specialized and timely prosecution
  • Victim empowerment
  • Training and education of criminal justice personnel to change negative attitudes towards victims of intimate partner violence.
Additional resources may be needed to ensure compliance with victims' rights laws.
Reviewed by Priscilla Schulz, September 1999
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