Abstract
This study investigated police officers‘ judgements of blame to both victims and assailants of family violence. Furthermore, the impact of these judgements on the reported likelihood of charging the assailants with assault was examined. The sample was selected from operational police officers of the Queensland Police Service. The sample included 51 male officers and 46 female officers. Ethnicity was not examined. However; 1.3% of police oficers identify as Indigenous and 5.8% of officers come from non-English speaking backgrounds. The subjects were presented with one of eight case vignettes of assault. In these vignettes two factors were varied, the victim gender (male and female), and alcohol consumption of the victim and assailant (both the assailant and the victim were drunk, neither were drunk, the assailant was sober and the victim drunk, and the assailant was drunk and the victim sober). A third independent variable was included, gender of the police officer Male and female police officers showed no differences in judgement of blame and reported likelihood of charging. However; the level of blame attributed to both the assailant and the victim vaned with the victim gender and the alcohol consumption of the disputants. Male victims were more likely to be blamed than female victims. Drunk victims were blamed more than sober victims. Furthermore,a relationship was found between the level of blame allocated to the victim and the reported likelihood of charging the assailant. These results indicate that police officers hold gender stereotypes that influence the way they respond to family violence.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Aramburu, B. E, & Leigh, B. C. (1991). For better or worse: Attributions about drinking aggression toward female and male victims.Violence and Victims, 6, 31–41.
Berk, S., & Loseke, D. (1981). ‘Handling’ family violence: Situational determinants of police arrest in domestic disturbances.Law Society Review, 15, 317–346.
Black, D. (1980).The manners and customs of the police. New York: Academic Press.
Buzawa, E. S., & Buzawa, C. G. (1990).Domestic violence: The criminal justice response. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cohn, E., & Sugarman, D. (1980). Abusing the one you love.Victimobgy, 5, 203–212.
Corenblum, B. (1983). Reactions to alcohol related marital violence: Effects on one’s own abuse experience and alcohol problems on causal attributions.Journal of Studies in Alcohol, 44, 664–674.
Critchlow, B (1985). The blame in the bottle: Attributions about drunken behavior.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 11, 258–274.
Grace, S. (1995).Policing domestic violence in the 1990’s. Home Office Research Study 139. London: HMSO.
Hart, B. (1993). Battered women and the criminal justice system.American Behavioral Science, 36, 624–638.
Hillier, L., & Foddy, M. (1993). The role of observer attitudes in judgements of blame in cases of wife assault.Sex Roles, 29, 629–644.
Howard, J. A. (1984a). Societal influences on attribution: Blaming some victims more than others.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 494–505.
Howard, J. A. (1984b). The ‘normal’ victim: The effects of gender stereotypes on reactions to victims.Social Psychology Quarterly, 47, 270–281.
Ireland, C. S. (1995) Alcohol and its contribution to violence: New directions for policing alcohol-related violence, crime and anti-social behavior in New South Wales. In D. Chappell & S Egger (eds.),Australian Violence: Contemporary Perspectives II. Australian Institute of Criminology: Canberra
Kantor, G. K., & Straus, M. A. (1987). The ‘drunken bum’ theory of wife beating.Social Problems, 34, 213–230.
Kraus, S. J. (1995) Attitudes and the prediction of behavior: a meta-analysis of the empirical literature.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 58–75.
Kristiansen, C., & Giulietti, R. (1990). Perceptions of wife abuse: Effects of gender, attitudes towards women, and just world beliefs among college students.Psychology of Women Quarterly, 14, 177–189.
Lavoie, E, Jacob, M., Hardy J., & Martin, G. (1989). Police attitudes in assigning responsibility for wife abuse.Journal of Family Violence, 4, 369–387.
Leigh, B. C, & Aramburu, B. (1994). Responsibility attributions for drunken behavior: The role of expectancy violation.Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 115–135.
Lerner, M. J. (1980).The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press.
Morley, R., & Mullender, A. (1994).Preventing domestic violence to women. Police Research Group Crime Prevention Series: Paper No. 48. London: HMSO.
Olsen, C. L. (1976). On choosing a test statistic in multivariate analysis of variance.Psychological Bulletin, 83, 579–586.
Pagelow, M. D. (1989) The incidence and prevalence of criminal abuse of other family members. In L. Ohlin & M. Tbnry (eds.),Family violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Richardson, D. C, & Campbell, J. L. (1980). Alcohol and wife abuse: The effect of alcohol on attributions of blame for wife abuse.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 51–56.
Shaver, K. G. (1970). Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 14, 101–113.
Sherman, L. W. (1992).Policing domestic violence. New York: Free Press.
Stanko, E. A., & Hobdell, K. (1993). Assault on men: Masculinity and male victimisation.British Journal of Criminology, 33, 400–415.
Stewart, A., & Homel, R. (1995). Correlates of victimisation for crimes against the person: An analysis of the 1991 Queensland Crime Victim Survey. In Criminal Justice Commission (ed.).Crime Victim Surveys in Australia; Proceedings of a conference held 28–29 November 1994. Brisbane: Criminal Justice Commission
Waaland, R, & Keeley, S. (1985). Police decision making in wife abuse: The impact of legal and extralegal factors.Law and Human Behavior, 9, 355–366.
Wortley, R. (1997). Attributions as a function of expertise: the case of the police decision to arrest.Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 525–538.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Stewart, A., Maddren, K. Police officers’ judgements of blame in family violence: The impact of gender and alcohol. Sex Roles 37, 921–933 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02936347
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02936347