¶ … police discretion in connection with mandatory arrest and domestic violence. What Constitutes Domestic Violence

The term 'domestic violence' refers to an abusive behavioral pattern in a domestic relationship, utilized by a partner for gaining or maintaining control and power over the other intimate partner. It may be emotional, sexual, physical, psychological, or economic threats or actions that one individual in the relationship uses for influencing the other. Domestic violence covers all behaviors that serve to daunt, scare, force, manipulate, sequester, humiliate, blame, threaten, terrorize, wound, hurt, or injure an intimate partner. Domestic violence incidents may be experienced by any individual irrespective of age, race, age, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. It impacts individuals belonging to all educational categories and socioeconomic backgrounds (Domestic Violence -- OVW -- Department of Justice, n.d). Furthermore, it can occur in same-sex as well as opposite-sex relationships, and may occur with married, dating, or cohabiting couples. Acts of domestic abuse or violence significantly impact the abused individual as well as other family members, witnesses, colleagues, friends, and the general community. Of all groups impacted by the crime of domestic abuse or violence, kids who are raised in households where they get to witness it are the most impacted. Regular exposure to domestic violence predisposes such kids to several physical and social issues, whilst also, alarmingly,...

Thus, this increases their possibility of becoming the succeeding generation of abusers and victims. In the year 2010, the NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) reported that the estimated domestic violence incidents added up to roughly 509, 230 (Walker and Katz, 2013 page 243). The survey also estimated that around thirteen percent of women in marital relationships have suffered some or other form of it. Police, apparently, usually exercise great measures of discretion in these cases. Alternative police responses include arrest, separation, mediation, social service referral, or absolute inaction.
Implementation of Mandatory Arrest Laws and Policy

In spite of an absence of empirical proof of mandatory policies' effectiveness, 24 states have implemented them (Davis, 2008). Also, each of the 50 states has some type of effective mandatory (pro-arrest or preferred) policy on domestic violence. The clearly observed issues generated by positioning a dangerous cart (i.e., mandatory policies) in front of a protective horse (coordinated community reaction) are continually ignored by the designers of public policy and advocates. An ever-increasing number of research works by feminist scholars record that mandatory policies of the "one-size-fits-all" nature (treating abusers and the abused as one single group), gives rise to a false impression of optimism that the nation's crime justice system can actually protect families (in…