ABSTRACT
It has long been fashionable to look to other jurisdictions, particularly the US, for possible solutions to the difficulties the criminal justice system has had in effectively responding to domestic violence in England and Wales. The pro-arrest approach introduced to England and Wales into the policy statements circulated by the Home Office to the police in the late 1980s and early 1990s was partly based on alleged successes of mandatory arrest policies pioneered in parts of the US a decade earlier. The more recent invocation of ‘enhanced’ or ‘effective’ evidence gathering as a solution to the difficulties of victim-based prosecutions similarly draws on the alleged successes of the approach of prosecuting domestic violence without the victim’s testimony in parts of US. This trend in looking abroad for solutions to the problem of developing an adequate criminal justice response to domestic violence is continued by the recent development of specialist domestic violence courts in England and Wales. Specialist domestic violence courts are at the core of the government’s strategy for improving the handling of domestic violence cases by the criminal justice agencies. The crucial question is whether the specialist court initiative has the ability to deliver the promised improvements.
