ABSTRACT
The first All Women Police Units (AWPU) was opened in the Thousand Lights area in central Madras on1992. It was considered a success in handling crimes against women and the Government sanctioned the opening of AWPUs throughout Tamil Nadu. Apart from age, education, and length of service, the officers in the AWPUs were not very different in terms of their personal backgrounds from the general sample of women officers questioned in 1988. Fewer of the women in the AWPUs had been employed on general patrol and traffic duties, the mainstay of policing. In AWPUs, officers are often stressed out with other policing assignments on a given day and often become impatient and irritable. If they are under pressure it is hard to focus properly on abused women. Specifically, Effectiveness in Dealing with Dowry Disputes focused on the process by which AWPUs act as a dispute processing system and whether intervention by women police can help reduce domestic violence.
