Revisiting the effect of warrantless domestic violence arrest laws on intimate partner homicides

Warrantless domestic violence arrest laws allow officers to make arrests of alleged offenders of domestic violence without warrants given probable cause. Existing literature classifies these laws into three groups based on the degree of arrest authority given to officers: discretionary, preferred, and mandatory. Using our updating of each type of warrantless domestic violence arrest law, we examine the causal effect of these laws on intimate partner homicides using differences-in-differences. In contrast to Iyengar (2009), we find no evidence that mandatory arrest laws, which remove officer discretion by making arrest a required action, increased intimate partner homicides. Instead, we find some evidence that discretionary arrest statutes, which allowed officer discretion to make arrests, decreased current and former spousal homicides.