Georgia's Domestic Violence Laws: A Study of the Effectiveness in Reducing Domestic Violence Incidents

Since the founding of the United States, there have been rules, regulations, and laws to govern people's behavior. Henning and Renauer (2005), as discussed in Prosecution of Woman Arrested for Intimate Partner Abuse, state that domestic violence laws are a recent addition to laws governing people's behavior. Until the 1980s, there was a propensity in the United States to treat domestic violence as a private family matter. In the mid 1990s, Georgia enacted a mandatory arrest policy for domestic violence. Although officer discretion is still a part of the decision to make arrests in domestic violence, the new laws gave more power to law enforcement officers in these situations. As there is an absence of literature on how effective domestic violence laws are in Georgia, the goal of this study was to examine the effect Georgia's domestic violence law has on reducing domestic violence incidents and whether or not there is an impact in female and dual arrest rates and weapons usage after the passage of the new laws. A secondary data analysis of official records using a multiple time-series design will be used, which allows collecting of data from specific periods before and after the passage of Georgia's domestic violence laws. A non-probability sampling design will be used, and the data will be collected from law enforcement agencies across Georgia. The results of this study indicated that Georgia's Domestic Violence Law is not statistically significant in reducing the number of domestic violence incidents; did not have a significant impact on female and dual arrests, and weapon usage during domestic violence incidents. This study will provide a foundation to fill the gap in the literature on the effectiveness of Georgia's domestic laws and create the opportunity to develop more useful training for law enforcement officers handling domestic violence incidents.