Generalized and racialized consequences of the police response to intimate partner violence in the U.S.: A systematic scoping review

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) impacts more than 40 % of people in the U.S. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has maintained a police-centric response to IPV, which relies on arrest—via policies like mandatory arrest laws—as its primary intervention. There is mixed evidence on whether IPV policing decreases subsequent IPV at the individual level, but less is known about IPV policing's broader collateral consequences. This systematic scoping review is the first to synthesize existing evidence for the generalized consequences of IPV policing in the U.S. We searched Web of Science, ProQuest, and EBSCO Host, and identified 36 relevant articles. Survivor criminalization was the most studied generalized consequence of IPV policing and existing studies have documented positive associations between mandatory arrest laws and risk of survivor arrest. We also found numerous methodologically rigorous studies on the effects of mandatory arrest laws on population-level IPV victimization. The review also identifies gaps in the evidence base: there is a need for research on additional potential consequences of IPV policing such as police violence against survivors, involvement of child protective services, and psychosocial and physical health outcomes of survivors.