研究發現，警察更傾向于拘捕有家庭暴力行為的男性，而對同樣引發家庭暴力的女性則多數傾向于聽之任之。

    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.

    最近一份有關家庭暴力的研究報告幾乎可以肯定男性受害者沒有受到警方認真對待

    上周有關家庭暴力數據的辯論作出了一個華麗的轉身。近些年大量調查表明，涉及男性受害者女性施暴者的事件比原先估計的要平常的多。男性團體長期以來認為官方犯罪數據嚴重低估了這個問題，因為幾乎沒有男性向有關部門報告受虐，那些報案的男性也可能不被采信，這已經到了當警方到達的時候，通常會拘捕那些男性報案者的地步。

    上周媒體報導了一項由瑪麗安娜·海絲特（Marianne Hester）教授進行的研究；她分析了來自諾森比亞（Northumbria） 警局數據庫時間跨度6年的家庭暴力事件的配對樣本。事實上海絲特的報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節，至少對我而言，是發現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警的頻率是只有一個穩定施暴者的大約4倍。如果鑒于上述發現，那么布里斯托大學（University of Bristol） 的這篇學報，以及基于這篇文章的其他報告讀來就會令人感到遺憾；上述報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現。這幾乎無法同警方不認真對待男性受害者的主張相吻合。相互競爭的這些主張是否可能以某種方式相調和呢？我認為它們可以。

    海絲特的研究發現在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。當一起疑似家庭暴力事件報告給諾森比亞警局的時候，警官們總會進入案件現場。當到達的時候，他們要確認"主要侵犯者",而其依據英國警察協會（ACPO）手則，如果有犯罪發生的證據或者如果某人處于險境，警方應該做出拘捕。由于首先要緩和局勢并保證受害者的安全，警官被要求在必要的的時候只逮捕一人；根據數據顯示，逮捕雙方極為罕見。警官們將會在以后把事件的簡要說明輸入數據庫。

    這里的數據告訴我們，如果有某些犯罪的證據，甚至是在警方被要求采取拘捕行動的時候，他們通常也不會做出行動--大概是因為沒有這樣做的理由。這并不讓人吃驚。在實踐中，警官門通常在事態平息后到達，當事雙方都不想做一份正式控告。或者警官可能發現混亂的狀態仍在繼續，那里有憤怒、眼淚、控訴還有反控訴，通常當事人都涉及酒精和毒品，但是沒有確實的暴力證據，以及一致的證詞。如果看上去警方一旦離開，局面就要再次升級為暴力，此時才必須做出拘捕，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。沒有做出拘捕的時候，通常是因為局面相對安定，還有/或者也搞不清楚到底形勢如何，這造成了沒有施暴者、受害者或者是某項犯罪的具體證據。盡管如此，為了警方家庭暴力數據建立的目的，警官們必須確定一個他們認為的"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警官作出自己的判斷之比，在權衡了各種可能之后，這些數據更可能是錯誤的。

    如果男性團體有關警方的斷言是有根據的，上述結果事實上就是我們應該期望看到的。在絕大多數模棱兩可的案件中，都假設應該譴責男性。起初貌似歧視女性的案子可能事實上是對男性偏見的產物。

    當然，有可能警方所有的評估都是完全精確的，男性真的在絕大多數案件是主要侵犯者。或者這些數據掩蓋了一系列針對男性的突發暴力攻擊。

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