American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 32, Nos. 3/4, December 2003 ( C  2003) Moving Beyond the Individual: Examining the Effects of Domestic Violence Policies on Social Norms Laura F. Salazar, 1,3,4 Charlene K. Baker, 1 Ann W. Price, 1 and Kathleen Carlin 2 To be effective, criminal justice policies should affect the underlying social norms for which the policies were enacted. This study sought to determine whether public perceptions of criminal justice policies on domestic violence affected social norms. Two waves of data were collected via a telephone survey where a random probability sample of 973 residents was drawn from 4 communities. A structural equation model was tested and confirmed. Results provided strong support for the hypothesis that perceptions of criminal justice policies have direct effects on attitudes toward criminal justice response, and indirect effects on victim-blaming attitudes, both underlying social norms related to domestic violence. The enactment of criminal justice policies, therefore, may have an impact beyond victims and perpetrators and lead to a trans- formation of the community through the emergence of new social norms. Public awareness campaigns designed to disseminate criminal justice policies may be instrumental in provoking social change. KEY WORDS: domestic violence; social norms; criminal justice policy; social change. INTRODUCTION Although some research has shown a decline in the number of women victimized by an intimate partner (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000), women continue to be the victims at an alarming rate. Inci- dence estimates reveal that women experience nearly 1 million victimizations per year at the hands of their spouse or an intimate partner (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000), and one in every three women in this country will experience intimate violence in their life- time (Koss et al., 1994). Intimate partner violence is more likely to occur than street violence or stranger violence (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000; Straus & Gelles, 1990), and women are more likely to be as- saulted or killed by an intimate partner than any other 1 Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Georgia. 2 Men Stopping Violence, Atlanta, Georgia. 3 School of Public Health, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. 4 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Rollins School of Public Health, Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, 1518 Clifton Road, N. E., Atlanta, Georgia 30322; e-mail: lfsalaz@sph.emory.edu. type of assailant (Browne & Williams, 1993; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000; Johnson, 1998). Research has indicated that 52% of all female homicide vic- tims were murdered by current or former husbands or boyfriends (Browne & Williams, 1993) and that 72% of all victims killed by intimates were women (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000; U.S. Department of Justice, 1994). There have been social and legal changes in the handling of domestic violence, but these data under- score the fact that more remains to be done. In the past 30 years battered women’s shelters and batterer treatment programs have proliferated, whereas law enforcement and judicial changes such as proarrest and no-drop prosecutorial policies have been implemented (Friedman & Schulman, 1990; Iovanni & Miller, 2001). Public opinion regarding do- mestic violence has shifted (Klein, Campbell, Soler, & Ghez, 1997). Previously, domestic violence was viewed as a “private, family matter” where the state had no obligation to intervene, and it was gener- ally believed that women somehow provoked the abuse used against them. Today, men’s violence against women is not generally considered a pri- vate matter. Explanations that attempt to blame 253 0091-0562/03/1200-0253/0 C  2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation