ABSTRACT
Despite the enactment of laws against spouse and child abuse and the development of relevant social movements, historically the prosecution of cases of family violence has been rare. Criminal- justice processing of such cases is equally unlikely. This chapter examines how relationship to the victim, which is also legally irrelevant to bail, affects bail setting. The influence of relationship to the victim on bail decisions is particularly interesting because, should the alleged offender be released on bail, he or she may return home to the victim. The chapter distinguishes between violent and nonviolent suspects by using the felony charges filed against the alleged offender. It uses multiple-regression techniques to investigate the extent to which the offender's relationship to the victim affects bail decisions and pretrial release, controlling for other relevant predictors, and separately for violent offenders and nonviolent offenders. A total of 1,020 cases pertain to nonviolent suspects, whereas 303 pertain to violent suspects.
