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Abstract: 

As both an attorney and a clinical social worker, Linda G. Mills has provided an important and unique perspective on how the child protection system should respond to cases where both women and children are being battered. See, e.g., Linda Mills, “Integrating Domestic Violence Assessment into Child Protection Services Intervention: Policy and Practice Implications” and in her “The Heart of Intimate Abuse: New Interventions in Child Welfare, Criminal Justice and Health Settings. However thought provoking, her argument becomes seriously misleading, when, in both the book and a more recent article (“Killing Her Softly: Intimate Abuse and the Violence of State Intervention,” 113 Harvard Law Review 551-613 (l999)), she extends it into uncompromising opposition to policies mandating arrest, prosecution and medical reporting in domestic violence cases.

Keywords: lack of evidence regarding negative effects of mandates

Affiliations:  1: Rutgers University .