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Intimate partner violence and third-party legal mobilization: considering the role of sexuality, gender, and violence severity

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Abstract

Objectives

This study examines how sexuality, gender, and severity affect the willingness of third parties to mobilize facets of the criminal justice system in response to witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV).

Methods

An M-Turk online sample of 803 adults in the USA completed a factorial vignette survey. Participants were presented with an incident of intimate partner violence and asked to report how likely they would be to notify police and select jail as punishment for the perpetrator.

Results

Results of the study uncover no clear evidence of heteronormative bias. Rather, female victims of IPV garner the most support from third parties. Furthermore, respondents were more likely to favor a jail sentence for male perpetrators. Patterns were amplified in severe incidents.

Conclusion

The current study suggests that gender and violence severity, rather than sexuality, are the most salient predictors of the third-party’s decision to notify the police and prefer strong criminal justice punishments.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the first author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

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  1. Department of Sociology and Criminology, The University of Iowa, 400H North Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA

    Kaylin M. B. Campbell & Mark T. Berg

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Correspondence to Mark T. Berg.

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The questionnaire and methodology for this study were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB-02 Behavioral/Social Science) of the University of Iowa (IRB ID# 201909828).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 7.

Table 7 Auto-fitted generalized ordered logistic regression coefficients predicting jail as punishment.
Full size table

*p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

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Campbell, K.M.B., Berg, M.T. Intimate partner violence and third-party legal mobilization: considering the role of sexuality, gender, and violence severity. J Exp Criminol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-024-09616-x

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