ABSTRACT
Dealing with marital violence forms only a small proportion of police work. Unless the police make it a standard practice to record all domestic incidents to which they are called that involve possible marital violence, there will be no precise way of recording their incidence. Nevertheless, in relation to other calls on police services, the amount of work generated by marital violence seems to be marginal. Overall, the authors figures suggest that given the large number of patients that doctors see, cases of marital violence are encountered relatively infrequently, a point made by many doctors they approached, and validated by data published in the National Morbidity Survey. Nevertheless, the authors were concerned to find out which of the fifty solicitors interviewed did most of this work, and what range of experience they had in dealing with marital violence. It should also be remembered that most British evidence of marital violence comes from agency reports.
