Police officers’ definitions and understandings of intimate partner violence in New Brunswick, Canada
| Author | Dale Ballucci,Mary Ann Campbell,Carmen Gill |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X19876974 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Police officers’ definitions
and understandings of
intimate partner violence
in New Brunswick, Canada
Carmen Gill
Department of Sociology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton,
Canada
Mary Ann Campbell
Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Saint John,
Canada
Dale Ballucci
Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, London,
Canada
Abstract
Police agencies have an important role to play in responding to intimate partner violence
(IPV) situations. The objective of our study was to examine how police officers define IPV
and to circumscribe police officers’ attitudes about the issue. This study examined
results from a survey conducted with police officers (N¼169) in the province of New
Brunswick. A major implication of our study points toward education and training as a
necessary passage to more efficient intervention as perceptions are not enough to make
an informed decision about IPV situations.
Keywords
Intimate partner violence, police officer, law enforcement, attitudes
Corresponding author:
Carmen Gill, Department of Sociology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 5A3,
Canada.
Email: cgill@unb.ca
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2021, Vol. 94(1) 20–39
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0032258X19876974
journals.sagepub.com/home/pjx
Introduction
Intimate partner violence (IPV)
1
is widely recognized as a societal concern with serious
consequences for victims, their families, the abuser, and society as a whole (Garcia-
Moreno et al., 2006). According to the World Health Organization (2013: 1), “1 in 3
women throughout the world will experience physical and/or sexual violence by a
partner or sexual violence by a nonpartner.” In 2016, IPV accounted for 28%of all
violent crimes reported to police in Canada; 79%of these victims were women; physical
assault was the most common form of IPV for both male and female victims; and most
victims were targeted by their current, rather than a former, intimate partner (Burczycka
and Conroy, 2018).
Over decades of research, vast gains have occurred in knowledge about the
dynamics of, risk factors for, and consequences of IPV and the criminal justice system
responses to this issue (Hilton and Harris, 2009; Taft et al., 2017). Since the 1980s, a
number of policies have been implemented at the national and provincial levels in
Canada to better respond to IPV, including funding strategies and criminal law
enforcement policies and legislation (Federal-Provincial-Territorial, 2013). For exam-
ple, mandatory charging policies were implemented by police agencies across Canada
in the 1980s as one of these responses (Johnson and Dawson, 2010). The development
of specialized courts in domestic violence (Ursel et al., 2008)in various provinces and
territories also led to more coordinated responses among professionals, including
police agencies. The recent development of specialized domestic violence units in
police agencies, sometimes including staff positions dedicated to working with IPV,
is reflective of some of the transformative changes in law enforcement strategies
designed to address IPV by police agencies.
As the research and practice literatures continue to grow and merge, there has been a
push for more strategic and evidence-informed policing practices within law enforce-
ment agencies in general (Huey, 2016; McKenna, 2018; Telep, 2017) and specific to IPV
(Campbell et al., 2018). These parallel processes have led to the implementation of
various training initiatives intended to facilitate police officers’ understanding and
knowledge of IPV to inform their response (Blaney, 2010; Russell and Sturgeon,
2019). Specifically, police officers’ perspectives with regards to how they should inter-
vene in IPV situations, what they view as appropriate behavior between the involved
parties, and how they understand the complexity of the issue of IPV itself likely influ-
ences their actions when responding to calls for service that involve IPV (Perez Trujillo
and Ross, 2008). Overtime, we should expect that changes in practices positively impact
police officers’ attitudes and perceptions of IPV and increase their role in the prevention
of this behavior through supporting police–community interventions.
Given these advances in knowledge, practice, and training pertaining to IPV emerging
within law enforcement contexts, it is important to understand how contemporary Cana-
dian police officers now contextualize and understand IPV and their role responding to
this issue. Thus, the objectives of our study were (1) to examine how police officers
currently define such a complex issue as IPV and (2) to circumscribe police officers’
attitudes about IPV within the contemporary knowledge base on the issue. We demon-
strate that the understanding of IPV influences how police officers perceive the issue,
Gill et al. 21
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