A State Report Card: Evaluation of Domestic Violence Victim-Centered Legislation by Stat

Previously, and in contemporary times, women have long suffered from domestic violence. Historically women were thought of as property by their husbands, which automatically gave them the right to punish their wives as they thought fit. In more contemporary times, the United States went through the women's movement in the 1970's to bring focus to domestic violence as a social problem and not a home problem. In 1994, the passing of the Violence Against Women Act brought domestic violence into the criminal justice system. Although there has been research on domestic violence policies, there has been little to no research on all 50 U.S. states that analyzes each state's legislative statues for "victim-centered" safety. This content analysis examines each individual state through Westlaw, and analyzes every domestic violence statute including arrest laws, protection orders and general statutes that were unique to each state. Some of the unique statutes included: gun restrictions, immigrant relief, primary aggressor laws, treatment programs and employment leave.;Furthermore, a few unexpected results included: global positioning devices that were put on offenders to keep track of them to make sure they were not getting close to the victim, the battered women syndrome defense was a surprise in that states are recognizing some victims may feel they have no way out of the abuse and use deadly force to protect themselves. These results and the process taken to discover them are discussed in detail in the following chapters.