According to Officer-Involved Domestic Violence: The
Mediating Factors Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and
Forensic Science: Vol. 6 , Article 9 (2018):
Various new studies have provided researchers with
more valid and credible data regarding the relationship between
factors of the workplace, and violence in police families. This
data is collected through an unbiased manner and is more
credible. Multiple small studies done regarding correctional
workers residing in the state of Florida utilize the McCreary and Thompson questionnaire created in 2006. This method provides
participants with specific questions, and their answers are graded
on a one (no stress) to seven (high stress) scale (Summerlin et
al., 2010). The studies found that in the population of
correctional officers and police officers, domestic violence
occurs at rates 40% greater than the public (2010). A study
conducted of 479 officers from other Eastern states found that
60% of the spouses were victims of verbal abuse. This
demonstrates that verbal abuse is an existing aspect of martial
disputes (Johnson, Todd, & Subramanian, 2005).
Additional studies carried out examined the Baltimore
police department between 1997 and 1999. Using proctor administered
surveys as the main method, two outside studies
found that 40% of police families had experienced partner
violence (Johnson, 1991 as cited in Anderson & Lo, 2011). The
1,104 participants of this study were all sworn, full-time law
enforcement employees of the Baltimore P.D. Of the 1,104
officers, 9% of them admitted to losing control at home, and
potentially engaging in acts of domestic violence against their
respective intimate partners (Anderson & Lo, 2011). A
significant correlation is visible in police officer family violence
because they have more cases of domestic and/or family
violence than families of the public. Taken from family violence
statistics presented by the U.S Department of Justice, between
1998 and 2002, only 11% of reported violence was family
violence, a minute statistic when compared to that of police
families (BJS, 2005).
The body of research done by Stinson and Liederbach
(2012) provides the greatest amount of empirical data on OIDV
to date. Their research reviews incidents in which police officers
were arrested for criminal offenses that were potential cases of
domestic violence. The crimes were collected from newspaper
articles available to the public, and only crimes that met a
standard of reliability were considered (Stinson & Liederbach,
2012). A 97.7% degree of reliability was established upon
simple agreement between two coders across all variables of the
study, which is above the considered reliable percentage (Stinson
& Liederbach, 2012). The degree of reliability tells us that the
cases studied are perceived in a less biased manner, and provide
statistically consistent data. In total, 324 cases met the
requirements, and were part of the research. Of the 324 cases, 74
occurred in 2005, 116 occurred in 2006, and the remaining 138
occurred in 2007. The significance of the data comes from the
fact that 98.8% of the arrests were of off-duty officers. Out of the
312 OIDV victims: 104 were the current spouse of the officer, 71
were a child or stepchild of the officer, and the remaining were
other relatives (2012).
Where "Summerlin" is Summerlin, Z., Oehme, K., Stern N., & Valentine, C. (2010).
Disparate levels of stress in police and correctional
officers: Preliminary evidence from a pilot study on
domestic violence. Journal of Human Behavior in the
Social Environment, 20(6), 762-777.
