Restraining Orders and Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

This article examines restraining orders; world-wide accepted measures for the protection of victims of domestic violence, also adopted in Slovenian legislation. Between 2021 and 2023, a project at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana was undertaken, in which police data on restraining orders imposed for the perpetration of intimate partner violence was examined. The effectiveness of the measure was confirmed through the number of violations (20% of the restraining orders were breached) and through the nature of violations (only 2,4% of restraining orders were violated with physical violence). We can conclude that the majority of perpetrators respected the restraining order and that this measure does mitigate severe cases of violence. When ascertaining the characteristics of offenders, we have discovered that former intimate partners are more likely to breach a restraining order than current intimate partners and that older perpetrators and those that have been violent in the relationship longer (from five to ten years) tend to breach the protective order to a lesser extent. Our analysis also pointed to restraining orders being less effective for offenders who have already been sanctioned for engaging in domestic violence or other forms of violence.