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The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment

By Lawrence W. Sherman and Richard A. Berk

Under a grant from the National Institute of Justice, the Minneapolis Police Department and the Police Foundation

conducted an experiment from early 1981 to mid-1982 testing police responses to domestic violence. A technical

report of the experiment can be found in the April 1984 issue of the American Sociological Review. This report

summarizes the results and implications of the experiment. It also shows how the experiment was designed and

conducted so the reader may understand and judge the findings.

Findings in Brief

The Minneapolis domestic

violence experiment was the first

scientifically controlled test of

the effects of arrest for any

crime. It found that arrest was

the most effective of three

standard methods police use to

reduce domestic violence. The

other police methods—

attempting to counsel both

parties or sending assailants

away from home for several

hours—were found to be

considerably less effective in

deterring future violence in the

cases examined. These were not

life-threatening cases, but rather

the minor assaults which make

up the bulk of police calls to

domestic violence.

The findings, standing alone as

the result of one experiment, do

not necessarily imply that all

suspected assailants in domestic

violence incidents should be

arrested. Other experiments in

other settings are needed to learn

more. But the preponderance of

evidence in the Minneapolis

study strongly suggests that the

police should use arrest in most

domestic violence cases.

Why the Experiment

Was Conducted

The purpose of the experiment

was to address an intense debate

about how police should respond

to misdemeanors, cases of

domestic violence. At least three

viewpoints can be identified in

this debate:

1. The traditional police

approach of doing as little as

possible, on the premise that

offenders will not be punished by

the courts even if they are

arrested, and that the problems

are basically not solvable.

2. The clinical psychologists’

recommendations that police

actively mediate or arbitrate

disputes underlying the violence,

restoring peace but not making

any arrests.

3. The approach recommended

by many women’s groups and the

Police Executive Research Forum

(Loving, 1980) of treating the

violence as a criminal offense

subject to arrest.

If the purpose of police responses

to domestic violence calls is to

reduce the likelihood of that

violence recurring, the question

is which of these approaches is

more effective than the others?

Policing Domestic

Assaults

Police have been typically

reluctant to make arrests for

domestic violence (Berk and

Loseke, 1981), as well as for a

wide range of other kinds of

offenses, unless a victim

demands an arrest, a suspect

insults an officer, or other factors

are present (Sherman, 1980).

Parnas’ (1972) observations of

the Chicago police found four

categories of police action in

these situations: negotiating or

otherwise “talking out” the

dispute; threatening the

disputants and then leaving;

asking one of the parties to leave

the premises, or, very rarely,

making an arrest.

Similar patterns are found in

many other cities. Surveys of

battered women who tried to

have their domestic assailants

arrested