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No-Contact Orders, Victim Safety, and Offender Recidivism in Cases of Misdemeanor Criminal Domestic Violence: A Randomized Experiment

American Journal of Criminal Justice Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Using an experimental design, this research examined the impact of proactive enforcement of court-imposed no-contact orders (NCOs) on offender behavior and victim safety in cases of misdemeanor domestic violence. The major research goals and objectives were to assess whether proactive enforcement: (1) enhanced victim safety by reducing offender recidivism; (2) increased victim knowledge about no-contact orders; and (3) reduced contact between offenders and victims. A prospective design was used to randomly assign 466 cases of misdemeanor criminal domestic violence to either systematic, proactive enforcement or to routine, reactive enforcement of the court-ordered no-contact order conditions. Treatment effectiveness was assessed by analyses of official criminal records data and victim survey data. Study results suggest that the treatment had no impact on victim safety or offender recidivism. Notably, victims in the treatment group were more likely to be aware that the no-contact order was in place, had higher level of contact with law enforcement and victim advocates, and more often viewed the contact with their batterer as stalking or harassment. Overall, findings from this study suggest important directions for future research examining the effectiveness of interventions for intimate partner violence and abuse.

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Notes

  1. Although there were 80 female offenders processed by the court during the study period, only cases involving male offenders and female victims were targeted for interviews. There were several reasons for this. First and foremost, the research was supported by monies provided under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Since the interviews were the most expensive part of the project, we elected to devote our resources to securing interviews with female victims in male-offender/female-victim cases. Second, the vast majority of the cases enrolled in our study (86 %) were male-offender/female-victim cases. Third, the development of a separate set of interviews and protocols for female-offender/male-victim cases would have significantly increased project complexity and logistical difficulty.

  2. The two DOs in our study reported different levels of effort to contact victims in the treatment group. One DO reported effort to contact in over 80 % of the treatment group cases while the other reported effort in slightly over 50 % of the cases. Despite this difference, the two DOs achieved remarkably similar successful contact rates of about 38 %. The DO with less contact effort said that some of the cases actually reached her after the case had already been disposed. We do have case disposition dates for the cases that have been disposed and dates that cases were enrolled in the study (although we do not have the dates the Lexington County Domestic Violence Court Administrator forwarded information to the DO). Since this problem occurred in both the treatment and control groups, we may be able to identify the affected cases in both groups and estimate the treatment effect without those cases. It may also be useful to identify individuals who clearly received the treatment and match them with people in the control group with similar characteristics to estimate the treatment effect as well. The treatment group described in this report is broadly construed to include everyone who was randomly assigned to the treatment condition. Thus, our analysis is best viewed as an “intent to treat” estimate of the treatment effect (Horvitz-Lennon, O’Malley, Frank, and Normand, 2005). Overall, these issues add up to the general problem of treatment noncompliance - a problem that exists in many field experiments in both the medical and social sciences.

  3. We conducted a number of supplementary analyses to adjust for pretreatment differences between the treatment and control groups (analyses not presented but available upon request). These analyses substantively resulted in the same conclusions presented here.

  4. Two cases in the treatment group, one case in the control group, and two cases in the interim control group were rearrested by the LCSD for a crime where the victim could have been the gateway incident victim. In these instances, however, we could not determine the victim’s identity so we don’t know whether the victim was the gateway victim.

  5. Some NCO violations are detected at the court and do not result in an arrest because the prosecutor sometimes uses these violations as leverage to solicit a guilty plea. These types of violations are not systematically recorded in either the arrest records or the court records because they are handled informally.

  6. The psychological aggression group included questions about the offender engaging in the following behaviors toward the victim: (1) insults/swears; (2) shouts; (3) stomps out of the room; (4) threatens to hit; (5) threatens to throw things; (6) destroys property; (7) threatens to hurt others; (8) calls names like “fat” and “ugly”; (9) accusations of laziness; (10) accusation of being a lousy lover; (11) preventing access to family money; (12) preventing from seeing family or friends; (13) preventing from working; (14) insisting on knowing whereabouts; and (15) knowing who calls on the phone.

  7. The physical aggression group includes questions about the offender engaging in overt physical attacks on the victim including: (1) kicking; (2) biting or punching; (3) slapping; (4) beating up; (5) hitting with an object; (6) choking; (7) slamming into a wall; (8) grabbing; (9) throwing something; (10) using knife or gun; (11) pushing or shoving; (12) twisting arm or hair; (13) burning or scalding.

  8. The sexual coercion group includes the following questions about actions by the offender against the victim: (1) insisting on anal sex but no force; (2) insisting on unprotected sex but no force; (3) using threats to coerce sex; (4) using threats to coerce anal sex; (5) forcing victim to have sex; and (6) forcing victim to have anal sex.

  9. The injury group asks victims about actual injuries inflicted on them by the offender during the reference period. This group is comprised of the following items: (1) cut or bleeding; (2) aches or pains; (3) felt pain the next day; (4) sprains or bruises; (5) scratched; (6) private parts bleeding; (7) broken bones or teeth; (8) head injury or concussion; (9) knocked unconscious; (10) hair pulled out; (11) eye or ear injury; (12) internal injuries; (13) received medical treatment for injuries; (14) offered medical treatment but declined; (15) saw medical doctor afterward; (16) needed to see a doctor but didn’t; and (17) received medical care at the hospital.

  10. The final group of questions asks about stalking or threatening behaviors by the offender directed at the victim during the reference period including: (1) following; (2) spying; (3) standing outside home; (4) going to parents’ house; (5) leaving items to find; (6) unsolicited telephone calls; (7) vandalizing victim’s property; (8) showing up where he doesn’t belong; (9) electronic communication; (10) giving messages through others; and (11) threats to deter the victim from going to court.

  11. The statistical model used to estimate the probabilities of non-response is included in the TWANG package and is called generalized boosted regression. Boosting methods are relatively new to the field of criminology and criminal justice but are being used with increasing frequency to estimate propensity scores which can then be used to estimate treatment effects in observational studies. The model in TWANG is estimated by calling the ps function. We assessed comparability between the first-round weighted responders and non-responders using TWANG’s bal.table function. Multi-category variables (race, court disposition, pre-trial diversion program disposition) are treated as factor (categorical) variables in R for purposes of these analyses.

  12. As suggested previously, however, our analyses suggested that women in the treatment group perceived they were being stalked at higher rates than women in the control group. We discuss this issue further below.

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Acknowledgments

This project was funded by National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice Award 2004-WG-BX-0007 to Robert Brame. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice or the National Institute of Justice. Thank you to the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office for collaborating with us on this research and to the women who participated in this research.

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Correspondence to Robert Brame or Angela R. Gover.

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Brame, R., Kaukinen, C., Gover, A.R. et al. No-Contact Orders, Victim Safety, and Offender Recidivism in Cases of Misdemeanor Criminal Domestic Violence: A Randomized Experiment. Am J Crim Just 40, 225–249 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9242-x

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