Abstract
The controversy about nation-wide implementation of mandatory arrest policies reflects the ambivalence with which feminists regard the police. On one hand, battered women’s advocates want to hold the police accountable, as agents of the state, for carrying out the government’s mandate to protect citizens. On the other hand, feminists realize that police often exercise their power in ways that reinforce the disadvantages already experienced by women, and in ways that reinforce the disadvantages experienced by members of poor and minority communities as well.