研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，警察更傾向于拘捕有家庭暴力行為的男性，而對(duì)同樣引發(fā)家庭暴力的女性則多數(shù)傾向于聽之任之。

    A recent report about domestic violence could actually confirm that male victims are not taken seriously by police

    The debate on domestic violence （DV） statistics took a fascinating turn last week. Recent years have seen numerous surveys which suggest that incidents involving male victims and female perpetrators are more common than had previously been assumed. Men's charities have long argued that the official crime figures significantly under-representthe problem, because so few men report abuse to the authorities, and those that do are likely to be disbelieved, often to the extent of being arrested themselves when police arrive.

    Last week, the media reported a study by Professor Marianne Hester, which analysed amatched-pairs sample from the Northumbria police database of DV incidents over a six-year period. Hester's report actually tells us little that we didn't already know.The most eye-catching details, to me at least, are the findings that female perpetrators are more than twice as likely to use a weapon as their male equivalents, and that couples where both parties are prone to aggression have police call-outs about four times as often as those couples with only one regular aggressor. In that light, it is disappointing that the University of Bristol press release, which formed the basis of all the press reports, chose to lead with the revelation that women are three times more likely to be arrested as men when they commit such acts. That hardly fits with claims that police don't take male victims seriously. Can these competing claims be in any way reconciled? I think they can.

    Hester's study found that male perpetrators are arrested on average after one in 10 incidents, whereas with a female perpetrator it is one in three. When an incident of suspected DV is reported to Northumbria police, officers will always attend the scene. When they arrive they are expected to identify the "primary aggressor" and, according to ACPO guidelines, if there is any evidence of a crime having been committed or if someone is in danger, they should always make an arrest. Since the priority is to defuse the situation and ensure the victim's safety, they are instructed to make only one arrest where possible, and according to the data, dual arrests are indeed extremely rare. Officers will later enter a short description of the incident in the database.

    The statistics here tell us that even though police are required to make an arrest if there is any evidence of a crime having occurred, they usually do not – presumably because there are no grounds to do so. This is not surprising. In practice, officers will often arrive after a situation has pacified, with neither party wishing to make a formal complaint. Or they may find an ongoing, chaotic scene of anger, tears, accusations and counter-accusations, often involving people influenced by drink or drugs, but no actual violence evident and no coherent testimony. If it seems likely that the situation will escalate into violence again when police leave, an arrest will have to be made, usually on grounds of breach of the peace – by far the most common offence recorded in the study. When no arrest is made, it will usually be because the scene is relatively safe and/or ambiguous, with no clear perpetrator, victim or specific evidence of an offence. Nevertheless, for the purposes of the police DV database, officers are still required to identify a person whom they think is the "primary aggressor". That one little judgment may be the key to this mystery.

    What we have here is not the ratio of how many men/women are arrested against how often they have committed an offence, but the ratio of how many men/women are arrested against how often a police officer decides that, on the balance of probabilities, they might have been more at fault.

    If the men's groups' claims about the police are valid, these results are in fact exactly what we should expect to see. The assumption, in the vast majority of ambiguous cases, has been that the man is to blame. What initially looks like a clear case of discrimination against women may in fact be a product of prejudice against men.

    Of course, it could be that the police officers are entirely accurate in all their assessments, and the men are indeed the primary aggressors in the vast majority of those incidents. Or these data could be hiding a rash of violent attacks against men.

    Unfortunately, one needs to read Hester's paper very closely to unravel this explanation. Nowhere in the report does she consider the possibility that the data she is using may be corrupted by the underlying biases, assumptions or slapdash paperwork of overworked police officers.

    最近一份有關(guān)家庭暴力的研究報(bào)告幾乎可以肯定男性受害者沒有受到警方認(rèn)真對(duì)待

    上周有關(guān)家庭暴力數(shù)據(jù)的辯論作出了一個(gè)華麗的轉(zhuǎn)身。近些年大量調(diào)查表明，涉及男性受害者女性施暴者的事件比原先估計(jì)的要平常的多。男性團(tuán)體長(zhǎng)期以來認(rèn)為官方犯罪數(shù)據(jù)嚴(yán)重低估了這個(gè)問題，因?yàn)閹缀鯖]有男性向有關(guān)部門報(bào)告受虐，那些報(bào)案的男性也可能不被采信，這已經(jīng)到了當(dāng)警方到達(dá)的時(shí)候，通常會(huì)拘捕那些男性報(bào)案者的地步。

    上周媒體報(bào)導(dǎo)了一項(xiàng)由瑪麗安娜·海絲特（Marianne Hester）教授進(jìn)行的研究；她分析了來自諾森比亞（Northumbria） 警局?jǐn)?shù)據(jù)庫時(shí)間跨度6年的家庭暴力事件的配對(duì)樣本。事實(shí)上海絲特的報(bào)告沒有告訴多少我們所不知道的東西。其中最吸引眼球的細(xì)節(jié)，至少對(duì)我而言，是發(fā)現(xiàn)了女性施暴者使用武器的傾向是相同條件下男性施暴者的兩倍多；雙方都有攻擊傾向的夫妻報(bào)警的頻率是只有一個(gè)穩(wěn)定施暴者的大約4倍。如果鑒于上述發(fā)現(xiàn)，那么布里斯托大學(xué)（University of Bristol） 的這篇學(xué)報(bào)，以及基于這篇文章的其他報(bào)告讀來就會(huì)令人感到遺憾；上述報(bào)告均選擇把女性被捕的可能性3倍于犯下同樣罪行的男性作為其首要發(fā)現(xiàn)。這幾乎無法同警方不認(rèn)真對(duì)待男性受害者的主張相吻合。相互競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的這些主張是否可能以某種方式相調(diào)和呢？我認(rèn)為它們可以。

    海絲特的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)在10起案件中平均有1名男性施暴者被捕，而女施暴者3起中有1個(gè)。當(dāng)一起疑似家庭暴力事件報(bào)告給諾森比亞警局的時(shí)候，警官們總會(huì)進(jìn)入案件現(xiàn)場(chǎng)。當(dāng)?shù)竭_(dá)的時(shí)候，他們要確認(rèn)"主要侵犯者",而其依據(jù)英國(guó)警察協(xié)會(huì)（ACPO）手則，如果有犯罪發(fā)生的證據(jù)或者如果某人處于險(xiǎn)境，警方應(yīng)該做出拘捕。由于首先要緩和局勢(shì)并保證受害者的安全，警官被要求在必要的的時(shí)候只逮捕一人；根據(jù)數(shù)據(jù)顯示，逮捕雙方極為罕見。警官們將會(huì)在以后把事件的簡(jiǎn)要說明輸入數(shù)據(jù)庫。

    這里的數(shù)據(jù)告訴我們，如果有某些犯罪的證據(jù)，甚至是在警方被要求采取拘捕行動(dòng)的時(shí)候，他們通常也不會(huì)做出行動(dòng)--大概是因?yàn)闆]有這樣做的理由。這并不讓人吃驚。在實(shí)踐中，警官門通常在事態(tài)平息后到達(dá)，當(dāng)事雙方都不想做一份正式控告。或者警官可能發(fā)現(xiàn)混亂的狀態(tài)仍在繼續(xù)，那里有憤怒、眼淚、控訴還有反控訴，通常當(dāng)事人都涉及酒精和毒品，但是沒有確實(shí)的暴力證據(jù)，以及一致的證詞。如果看上去警方一旦離開，局面就要再次升級(jí)為暴力，此時(shí)才必須做出拘捕，通常是以妨害治安的罪名--到目前為止這是研究中最常見犯罪記錄。沒有做出拘捕的時(shí)候，通常是因?yàn)榫置嫦鄬?duì)安定，還有/或者也搞不清楚到底形勢(shì)如何，這造成了沒有施暴者、受害者或者是某項(xiàng)犯罪的具體證據(jù)。盡管如此，為了警方家庭暴力數(shù)據(jù)建立的目的，警官們必須確定一個(gè)他們認(rèn)為的"主要侵犯者".這一小小的判斷可能就是揭開迷局的鑰匙。

    我們目前掌握的比率，不是多少被捕的男性或者女性與他們多久犯下罪行之比；而是多少被捕的男性或者女性與多久一個(gè)警官作出自己的判斷之比，在權(quán)衡了各種可能之后，這些數(shù)據(jù)更可能是錯(cuò)誤的。

    如果男性團(tuán)體有關(guān)警方的斷言是有根據(jù)的，上述結(jié)果事實(shí)上就是我們應(yīng)該期望看到的。在絕大多數(shù)模棱兩可的案件中，都假設(shè)應(yīng)該譴責(zé)男性。起初貌似歧視女性的案子可能事實(shí)上是對(duì)男性偏見的產(chǎn)物。

    當(dāng)然，有可能警方所有的評(píng)估都是完全精確的，男性真的在絕大多數(shù)案件是主要侵犯者。或者這些數(shù)據(jù)掩蓋了一系列針對(duì)男性的突發(fā)暴力攻擊。

    不幸的是，你必須非常仔細(xì)的閱讀的海絲特的論文才能弄清楚這個(gè)解釋。她完全沒有在報(bào)告中考慮到會(huì)有這樣的可能性，正在使用的數(shù)據(jù)可能會(huì)受到某些潛在偏見，那些過勞的警官們的推測(cè)，或者草率的文書工作的誤導(dǎo)。