The relationship between husbands and wives is one of the strongest bonds in our society. It is deep, passionate, and often
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. The exact amount of husband-wife violence is difficult to
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, but it is one of the most common of all forms of violence. More calls to the police involve family disturbances
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all other forms of violent behavior
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. In 1993, New York city police
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received 300,000 domestic violence calls. But researchers deemed that it was still an
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. They estimate that it actually occurs in about one of
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two marriages.
In many societies, husbands have traditionally had the legal right to physically punish wives who refuse to accept male
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. Although this practice is no longer
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in Western culture, it still occurs.
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, many victims of spousal abuse find that the police are reluctant to be of much help. Battered women report that abusive husbands are merely given a lecture or spend the night in jail and are soon back to their
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ways. There appear to be two major reasons for this. First, most police officers are male, and they tend to hold a traditional view of gender roles. Even assaults that do serious physical harm to the
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are often seen as private matters that should be
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by the married partners, not the police. Second,
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other violent crimes, a significant percentage of the victim of spousal abuse drop the charges
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their attackers, some officers feel that even a vigorous enforcement effort is likely to produce few results.