Differential Court Decision Making for Similar Behavior? Court Decisions in Cases of Domestic and Nondomestic Assault

• In Event: Using the Virginia Pretrial Data Project to Address Theoretical, Empirical & Policy Related Issues

Abstract

Domestic violence is a pervasive social problem confronted by social service agencies, medical practitioners and the criminal justice system. The general assembly of Virginia reports that the Commonwealth takes domestic violence seriously and provides “tools and resources to prosecutors, law enforcement officers, victim advocates, health care providers, social service providers, and allied professionals”. Indeed, Virginia is a mandatory arrest state; however, to our knowledge there is no formal statement about how cases should be processed once the arrest has been made. Here we use data provided by the Virginia Pre-Trial Project to explore court decision making in cases of misdemeanor domestic violence. To provide in interesting comparison group, we compare these courtroom outcomes with a matched comparison group of nondomestic assault cases. Although we recognize, and will discuss, the limitations of the comparison group; we argue that this is a critical first step in fuller understanding of how the commonwealth responds to domestic violence, compared to violence in other contexts. Theoretical and policy implication will be discussed.

Authors

• Randy R. Gainey, Old Dominion University

• Jeehye A. Kang, Old Dominion University