ABSTRACT
This chapter explores law enforcement and criminal justice responses to intimate partner assault. Excellent texts and research material can be found that discuss police and domestic violence. The chapter explains the various responses to intimate partner abuse that may be taken by criminal justice agencies. It discusses the effects of arrest on those who batter their spouse and examines the goals of the Violence Against Women Act. A police officer may not knowingly refrain from interference in such violence and may not automatically decline to make an arrest simply because the assailant and his victim are married to each other. Police inaction on the part of the officer is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. Special women’s police stations, staffed with multi-disciplinary female teams equipped to respond to the different needs of victim survivors, have been set up in several countries as an attempt to make police stations more accessible to women.
