US: Mandatory domestic violence arrests raise death rate 400%

Article here. Excerpt:

'A shocking illustration of unintended consequences -- the long-term analysis of 1200 domestic violence cases in Milwaukee marks the greatest challenge yet to the “mandatory arrest” policies that were adopted across North America and Britain in the 1980s. Those policies, for domestic assault without serious injury, came after years of police minimizing domestic violence as a private family matter, and are broadly supported as key to reducing harm.
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Based on an experiment in Milwaukee, it shows a four-fold increase in early death for victims who were employed at the time of the violence, with an even stronger effect among African-Americans. The findings are to be presented jointly in the U.S. and at a policing conference in the U.K.

“It remains to be seen whether democracies can accept these facts as they are, rather than as we might wish them to be,” writes Lawrence W. Sherman, a criminologist at Cambridge University, in an article co-authored with Edward Flynn, Milwaukee’s chief of police.
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“It should be a warning to Canada, where there’s never been this kind of experiment,” Prof. Sherman said, but added neither the Canadian government nor police “have shown any interest in using rigorous testing methods to develop evidence about the effects of police decisions, or to compare the effects of two possible ways of dealing with a policing situation.”'