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Determinants of Police-Filed Petitions for Protection Orders in Taiwan: Comparing Predictive Factor Salience in Intimate Partner Violence Cases in the USA and Taiwan

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Abstract

Policing intimate partner violence (IPV) in Asian contexts has received relatively little research attention since few jurisdictions have specific legal provisions to prohibit IPV. Even less research has been conducted to understand the circumstances under which police petition for protection orders while dealing with IPV victims in a non-Western society. This study seeks to address this gap in research by exploring the pattern of police petitioning for protection orders in Taiwan when dealing with IPV incidents. This study assesses the determinants of police filing both urgent and non-urgent protection orders; it focuses on 944 IPV incidents involving female victims. Multivariate analysis is employed to examine the impact of victim-, perpetrator-, and incident-related factors on police filing protection order petitions. Results show that all three factors predict police actions, with somewhat different effects on the two types of protection orders. Taiwan police decision-making in the IPV area entails frequent discrepancies between “law on the books” and “law in action” with respect to IPV victims. We call for more empirical studies on both coercive and supportive types of police actions against IPV. Some policy implications related to the goal of enhancing the effectiveness of police-initiated protection orders in Taiwanese society are derived from the study.

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Notes

  1. Section one, article 8 of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.

  2. Section five, article 16 of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.

  3. Section two Article 10 of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.

  4. Section two Article 14 and Article 16 of the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.

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  1. Graduate School of Criminology, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Lanying Huang & Yushen Lin

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  1. Lanying Huang
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  2. Yushen Lin
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Correspondence to Lanying Huang.

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Huang, L., Lin, Y. Determinants of Police-Filed Petitions for Protection Orders in Taiwan: Comparing Predictive Factor Salience in Intimate Partner Violence Cases in the USA and Taiwan. Asian Criminology 9, 301–322 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-014-9194-6

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