Examining gender bias in the policing of intimate partner violence

By Adam Teperski, Ilya Klauzner

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) remains a pressing public health and criminal justice issue. Concerns have been raised about police misidentification of IPV victims as offenders - particularly women - due to factors such as self-defensive violence and non-conforming victim behaviour. Misidentification can have serious consequences, including criminalisation of victims and reduced access to support services.

This study investigates whether police are more likely to charge women with IPV offences by examining whether different evidentiary thresholds are applied to male and female persons of interest (POIs) in IPV assault cases. We use a robust instrumental variables approach to compare conviction rates among ‘marginal’ defendants—those who are on the cusp of being charged or not, depending on the attending officer’s individual tendency to proceed with legal action.

The analysis draws on 52,423 IPV assault incidents reported between July 2010 and February 2023, involving 38,413 male and 14,010 female POIs. By comparing conviction rates among marginal male and female POIs, we assess whether police require less evidence to charge women. If so, this would suggest gender bias in police charging decisions and support concerns about misidentification.

Key findings

Figure 1 presents our estimates of the impact of being proceeded against on the probability of conviction by gender for marginal POIs, after controlling for case characteristics, demographics and prior offending. 

Marginal female POIs had a conviction rate of 81.7%, while marginal male POIs had a rate of 67.2%. Although this 14.5 percentage point difference suggests stronger cases against women, it was not statistically significant. 

This indicates that police officers apply similar evidentiary thresholds when deciding to charge male and female POIs in IPV assault incidents. The findings suggest no gender bias in police charging decisions among experienced officers. However, the analysis does not account for potential bias in other parts of the justice system or among less experienced officers.

• Found no difference in the court conviction rate between marginal women and men charged with IPV. This suggests that experienced police apply similar evidentiary thresholds when charging men and women in IPV assault cases. 

Study 2: The nature and extent of cross-intimate partner violence 

• Cross-IPV, where both partners face legal action, is rare but increasing—from 0.7% of IPV events in 2010–11 to 2.5% in the year to Feb 2023; cross-ADVOs also rose from 5.7% in 2016 to 13.7% in 2023. 

• Review of police cross-IPV incidents found men and women involved showed similar rates of violent behaviours and physical injury.   

• Past DFV experience in cross-IPV incidents: Men were more likely to have a longer history of perpetration, while women were likely to have experienced more prior victimisation. 

Neither study found evidence that women are mischarged in the specific circumstances considered. However, misidentification is difficult to detect in administrative records, and these findings do not rule out that misidentification occurs in individual cases or under different circumstances.