Aspects of Battered Women

The patriarchal (sometimes referred to as hierarchical) rhetoric usually follows lines of reasoning which suppose that the incident of violence directed at a women by a non-stranger is brought about through some act or omission on the part of the woman or her family, is preventable if the woman offers more than token resistance, and is rooted in centuries-old systems which reinforced the status of women as the property of their husbands. Hart (1993) recognizes this when she writes that, "Unlike other victims of violent crime, battered women are often viewed . . . as responsible for the crimes committed against them" and may further be considered "unworthy victims" in the eyes of some within the criminal justice system (p. 626).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the feminist dialogue prefers to view the problem of violence against women as one of gender inequality. Edleson and Frank (1991) depict some of the feminist analyses as: "Gender inequality plays a central role at both the personal and societal level in creating and maintai

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Sherman, 1993, p. 601). In less than a decade, nearly a third of the states had implemented mandatory arrest laws in reaction to the Minneapolis experiment, despite Sherman & Berk's expressed desire to conduct replication studies to validate their initial findings. Instead, as additional studies were conducted and the results compiled, it was becoming very unclear whether arrest was providing the intended benefit of reduced violence over the long-term (Schmidt & Sherman, 1993, pp. 603-605). There was no pattern which emerged as a result of the implementation of the new strategies of mandatory arrest. But because of the findings in more than a few areas that arrest resulted in a "backfire" effect leading to increased recidivist violence, Sherman concluded that mandatory arrest laws should be repealed because "the punishment sought by advocates and community policymakers may encourage more crime" (Schmidt & Sherman, 1993, p. 609). Many others now agree with this assertion, To the contrary, however, Stark (1993) views Sherman's change of heart as premature, if not unfounded. Stark believes that the negative views expressed by Sherman, Gelles, and others are perhaps found in the form of "embedded assumptions" which each
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Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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