Missing voices - Patterns of battered women's satisfaction with the criminal legal system

Many survivors of intimate partner violence turn to the criminal legal system for help in ending, the violence against them. An increasing amount of research has focused on how the system ought to handle these cases. But, with few exceptions, the existing research has not examined survivors' satisfaction with the criminal legal system. The current research explored intimate partner violence survivors' patterns of satisfaction with the criminal legal system response. Survivors from three sites were interviewed after a domestic violence-related court case closed. Cluster analysis revealed four patterns of satisfaction with multiple components of the criminal legal system. Multinomial logistic regression was used to evaluate an ecological model predicting cluster membership. Characteristics of the survivor and assailant, the criminal legal system response, and women's perceived control over this response were all related to satisfaction, Implications for improving the criminal legal system response to survivors of intimate partner violence are discussed.