Research reveals that nearly one-third of all female homicide victims in the United States are killed by a husband or boyfriend. Another third of all emergency hospital visits by women are due to injuries sustained in domestic violence. Children are direct or indirect victims of abuse in more than half of such domestic violence cases. Without intervention, the pattern of abusive behavior typically escalates in both frequency and intensity. One important means of intervention is issuing court protection orders that limit or prohibit contact between individuals in abusive domestic situations. Therefore, law enforcement agencies should fully enforce these orders and, to that end, maintain a system that will provide up-to-date information on these orders to officers responding to domestic disturbances.

These documents provide information and guidance on how to process and enforce court protection orders.

This topic has been archived - it is intended for reference purposes only and will not be updated.