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“Whoa! They Could’ve Arrested Me!”: Unsuccessful Identity Claims of Women During Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence

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Abstract

Many jurisdictions in the U.S. have implemented mandatory arrest policies in an attempt to limit police officers’ discretion in their arrest decisions when responding to intimate partner violence calls. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with female victims of intimate partner violence, I explore the ways in which mandatory arrest policies have influenced the identity work of women during their interactions with police officers. I focus specifically on women’s “unsuccessful” identity claims: situations where women are unable to convince police officers that they are victims and situations where women are unable to convince officers that they are not victims. I examine the strategies that women use during their identity work and explore the consequences of women’s failed self presentations under mandatory arrest policies, the most significant of which is a woman’s arrest. I argue that under mandatory arrest policies, for many women, the risk of failed identity work is even more consequential than before these policies were established.

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Notes

  1. Instead of mandatory arrest policies, some states have adopted preferred/presumptive arrest policies that provide officers with a bit more discretion when making an arrest (Buzawa and Buzawa 2003).

  2. Other factors that spurred the development of mandatory arrest legislation, include class-action lawsuits filed by battered women against police departments who failed to arrest abusers (Schechter 1982) and a pioneer study (termed the “Minneapolis Experiment”) conducted by Sherman and Berk in the 1980s that showed the arrest of batterers prevented future violence (Gelles 1996). In the 1990s, however, replication studies in 6 cities of Sherman and Berk’s study showed both deterrent and backfiring effects of arrest (Schmidt and Sherman 1996). These replication studies painted a very muddy and confusing picture regarding the effectiveness of arrest in deterring intimate partner violence.

  3. As Loseke (1992) importantly notes, not all of these claims-makers have been united in their understandings of this issue; there have been disagreements even among different groups of feminist claims-makers.

  4. One notable exception to this is a study of women’s subjective experience of police encounters by Rajah et al. (2006) that draws from a very small sample size (nine women).

  5. While none of my interviewees saw themselves as abusers, many of them did not view themselves as victims either. I discuss the complex reasons for some of the women’s hesitancy to identify as victims elsewhere (Leisenring 2006).

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Acknowledgements

I am deeply thankful for the feedback and support provided by Susan Murray. I also thank Javier Auyero and the anonymous reviewers at Qualitative Sociology for their constructive comments.

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  1. Department of Sociology, One Washington Square, San Jose, CA, 95192–0122, USA

    Amy Leisenring

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  1. Amy Leisenring
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Correspondence to Amy Leisenring.

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Leisenring, A. “Whoa! They Could’ve Arrested Me!”: Unsuccessful Identity Claims of Women During Police Response to Intimate Partner Violence. Qual Sociol 34, 353–370 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-011-9190-4

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