Partially Identified Treatment Effects under Imperfect Compliance: The Case of Domestic Violence

During the 1980s a set of randomized experiments were carried out to determine the usefulness of a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders. The first of these was the Minneapolis Domestic Violence experiment (MDVE), which was carried out in 1981. This paper re-examines the data from the MDVE and uses the recent literature on partial identification to determine the implications for a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders today. I find support for a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders, even under a set of minimal assumptions on offender and police behavior.