In 1998, in an attempt to undo the long-standing neglect of domestic violence, legislators placed a set of duties on the police in relation to domestic violence and coupled these with a unique system of accountability relations and practices. This articles examines the effect of these in three ways:review both of complaints of misconduct, as well as the station audits conducted in terms of the Domestic Violence Act's prescripts, and analysis of the workings of the Act's accountability mechanisms over time. This shows the Act's system of accountability to have had some success in making domestic violence a policing priority. But this has taken a number of years of interaction across the domains of the political, legal, bureaucratic and the social to accomplish. On this account accountability reveals itself to be a contingent outcome and practice that also takes different forms at different times. It also remains an ambivalent undertaking in relation to domestic violence. While answers may be demanded of the police, oversight of these responses is lodged with an agency possessing limited capacity and weak institutional authority.

中文翻译：

---

Alutacontina：问责制和家庭暴力法，1998年第116号

1998年，为了消除长期以来对家庭暴力的忽视，立法者对警察施加了一系列与家庭暴力有关的职责，并将其与独特的问责关系和实践体系相结合。本文通过以下三种方式检查了这些措施的效果：审查不当行为投诉以及根据《家庭暴力法》的规定进行的派出所审核，以及随着时间的推移对该法的问责机制的运作进行分析。这表明该法案的问责制在使家庭暴力成为治安优先领域方面取得了一些成功。但这需要跨政治，法律，官僚和社会各个领域的互动来完成多年。因此，问责制本身就是一个偶然的结果和做法，在不同的时间也采取不同的形式。在家庭暴力方面，这仍然是一项矛盾的工作。尽管可能要求警察回答，但监督这些回应的机构是能力有限且机构权威薄弱的机构。