Estimating the rate of domestic violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers: A review of methods and estimates

Rates of officer-perpetrated domestic violence have not been estimated across studies, limiting our knowledge of the extent of this social problem. The purpose of this article is to report on the range of officer-involved domestic violence and the inconsistencies in research methodology across studies. For this article, domestic violence was operationalized as the self-reported use of physical/domestic violence by a law enforcement officer toward an intimate partner. A systematic review of all relevant literature published before April 2015 was conducted to identify primary research studies that provide percentage of law enforcement officers who self-report perpetrating domestic violence. A total of 667 potentially relevant articles were identified by searching Proquest Criminal Justice, PsycINFO through Proquest, ISI Web of Knowledge, reference harvesting, dissertation databases, and institutional reports. Seven articles met the inclusion criteria, offering a range of 4.8-40% of officers who self-report perpetrating domestic violence. Discrepancies in prevalence rates may be attributable to measurement and sampling decisions. This article makes recommendation for future research by identifying the strengths and limitations of previous research. Accurately tracking the rate of OIDV is important to evaluate the effectiveness of laws, policies, and interventions designed to reduce the prevalence of officer-perpetrated domestic violence.