The past quarter-century has witnessed a dramatic upsurge of violent crime in the United States and abroad. In this country, the rise in violent criminal activity has been consistently documented in such published accounts as the Uniform Crime Reports and the Statistical Handbook on Violence in America, published by the FBI and the Vio- lence Research Group, respectively. Further, social scientists-particularly those working in the fields of sociology and psychology-have provided a convergence of findings attesting to the magnitude of one of today's most significant social problems: domestic...