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Increase in Mortality Rates of African-American Women Following Mandatory Arrest Laws: A Study in Unintended Effects

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Published/Copyright: January 24, 2023
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Abstract

From the late 1970s into the 1990s, 20 states in the USA passed’ mandatory arrest laws’, designed to curb domestic violence, by requiring the responding officer to arrest the offender. I show that these laws led to an increase in the mortality rates of African-American women. The increase takes place approximately four years after the law was passed and loses its statistical significance as time passes. I infer from these results that mandatory arrest laws had unintended consequences for the victims whose partners were arrested, but that these unintended consequences impacted the victims only in the few years following the law. I conclude that increased awareness of the law and offender deterrence eventually mitigates these unintended consequences. I propose a potential explanation for the increase in mortality rates, and make a policy recommendation that offenders and victims be informed about the law change if such a change is to be made.


Corresponding author: Sinan Ozel, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

This paper and the research behind it would not have been possible without the exceptional support of my supervisors, Dr. Pascal Courty and Dr Elisabeth Gugl. I was fortunate to have them both as mentors. I am also indebted to members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Janice Compton, Dr. Martin Farnham and Dr. Catherine Worthington, for their valuable comments. I am further indebted to the two anonymous peers for their review. I appreciated all of the thoughtful and valuable feedback that they gave. The paper improved greatly based on this feedback. I am further grateful for various members of the faculty at University of Victoria, especially Dr. Chris Auld, for their contributions to my intellectual development in economic thinking. Last but not least, I am indebted to my partner-in-life and my love, Melis Ciner, for patiently supporting me along the way. She is my rock.

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Published Online: 2023-01-24

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