Part 1 introduces the author's general perspective on preventing domestic violence. He advises that although the ultimate prevention of domestic violence entails cultural change, especially in men, the criminal justice system is responsible for protecting potential victims who cannot wait for cultural change. There are relatively effective interventions to protect women from most batterers. These interventions must be assessed against a higher standard of success, one that reaches the hard-core batterer who appears immune to criminal sanctions. Part 2 of this paper references the 1984 Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence Final Report and reviews major recent advances in understanding the preventive impact of criminal justice. The Task Force's report emphasizes two guiding principles for preventive policies and action; first, the legal response to family violence must be guided primarily by the nature of the abusive act, not the relationship between the victim and the abuser; second, the public must become aware of the nature of the problem and its obligations in combatting it. The problem of protecting victims through criminal justice has focused on police actions, with little concern and no control for subsequent prosecutorial and judicial processing. The best evidence on protective impacts of prosecution policy is based on the Indianapolis Domestic Violence Prosecution experiment. Under this policy, battered women who initiate complaints with the prosecutor are told that they may drop charges after the defendant has been arraigned if they are certain that doing so is in their best interest. At the same time, they are strongly encouraged to follow through with the charges so as to protect themselves. Court-mandated treatment, either by diversion agreement or as a condition of probation, is the most popular of prosecutorial options. Prosecutors can further support and protect victims by attending to victim interests throughout the prosecution process. Given the contributions of the 1984 task force and policy evaluations conducted over the last 10 years, the author proposes regrouping to assess criminal justice impacts on domestic violence; the Attorney General should reassemble an Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence to review the current status of prevention efforts, to address new issues that were unanticipated by the previous task force, and to reassess needs for research today.