Main findings indicated that the police in Singapore had incorporated and institutionalized the use of alternative categories of domestic violence as legitimate operational police responses. This means that the police redefined which acts of violence were viewed as criminal acts worthy of police intervention. The alternative categories served to define deserving versus undeserving victims and largely reinforced social divisions of race, class, and sexuality. The categories operated in practice to allow opportunities to ease cases of domestic violence out of the criminal justice system, particularly for cases in which the victim was unwilling or unable to substantiate the violence claims. In addition to easing cases out of the criminal justice system, the alternative categories also functioned to relocate the victim and the offender, who had been referred for counseling through the referral process, back into the family unit. The findings suggest that both the philosophy and the practice of policing policies regarding domestic violence in Singapore reflect the goal of keeping family units intact, which also supports the government’s position on the moral limits of police intervention in cases of domestic violence. The Singapore Government has actively promoted the family unit as the “building block of society” which has in turn heavily guided domestic violence policies in the country. Indeed, reforms such as mandatory and presumptive arrest have never entered the political discourse in Singapore. The study used two qualitative methods: participant observation and case study. Fieldwork was carried out between 1999 and 2002 with the Singapore police. During the 800 hours of fieldwork, 176 “true” cases of domestic violence were observed, which were defined as couples who shared some form of intimate acquaintance as partners. Future research should examine the policing experiences of domestic violence victims in Singapore. References