Reconsidering Domestic Violence Recidivism: Individual and Contextual Effects of Court Dispositions and Stake in Conformity in Hamilton County, Ohio, 1993-1998

This study examined empirical relationships between various
court dispositions and the prevalence, incidence, and delay of
domestic violence recidivism. It built on past research by examining
the possible effects of formal and informal social controls at the
individual level, as well as the contextual effects of community
characteristics on individual behavior. The researchers collected
information on 3,662 suspects arrested for misdemeanor domestic
violence (specifically, assault against an intimate) in Hamilton
County, Ohio, during August 1, 1993, to October 31, 1993, and January
1, 1995, to December 31, 1996. All arrestees in the sample were
tracked until June 1998. The dataset includes information pertaining
to demographic and background characteristics of suspects (e.g., race,
age, means of support, education, employment, marital status,
residential stability, number of children the suspect had, and if the
suspect lived with a spouse and/or children at arrest), their criminal
histories (prior convictions for misdemeanors and felonies, prior
incarceration, alcohol/drug addiction, and pending charges), how their
cases were disposed (e.g., no charges filed, charges dropped,
acquitted at trial, sentenced to an offender program, probation, or
jail), rearrests for domestic violence that occurred between the
initial arrest and May 31, 1998, and the number of months that elapsed
between case disposition and rearrest.