Writing Feedback /
Domestic Abuse (persuasive essay) [3]
"Everyone says that there are too many law enforcement officers," Everyone? Really? No one at all is calling for more police officers to be hired anywhere in America? (Hint: these are rhetorical questions. A large segment of the public, generally those who self-identify as conservative, tends to generally favor strong police forces.)
"This visual shows a teenager that is a high school football player, it also shows that he is a gang member. This is one of the finger signs of a gang member, is he an innocent victim or an undercover gang?" With the "this visual" thing, which you use again later, will there actually be visual aids as part of a presentation? If not, this is confusing. Also, the two visuals seem to have nothing to do with domestic abuse, per se.
What exactly is your argument? You say that we need more police officers, but also that the punishment for domestic abuse isn't strong enough. These could both be true, but you present them together, as if they were both part of the same argument rather than two separate arguments. If the punishment for domestic abuse is too light to be an effective deterrent, then having more police officers won't help. If the punishment is increased, but police don't have the resources to prosecute domestic abusers, then that won't help either. So, you can argue that we need to both increase the number of police officers and the severity of sentences, but you have to say this, instead of leaving it for the reader to figure out.
Also, you might want to deal with some of the other reasons domestic abuse cases are problematic for police. For instance:
In the event of non-physical, non-sexual abuse, most of the behavior that qualifies is verbal, and not even considered illegal.
Even many acts of physical or sexual abuse leave little trace evidence. Those attacks that do leave obvious bruising/tearing/scarring tend to occur in the home, with no witnesses. This means that many abuse cases come down to he said/she said affairs in court, with the victim's word pitted against that of the accused. Given that our legal system assumes the accused (in any crime) is innocent until proven guilty, this makes abuse case difficult to prosecute, especially if there is little or no physical evidence of abuse.
In many cases of physical abuse, the victim will not agree to testify against her abuser, or will back out afterwards, either because she believes her abuser will change, or because she is still emotionally in thrall to her abuser, or because she is reliant on her abuser for financial support, or for some combination of these reasons.
Police hate dealing with domestic abuse calls, because, especially in cases of spousal abuse, the victim (usually the wife) may well turn on the police as soon as they attempt to restrain her husband / boyfriend.
Finally, with the exception of child abuse, it is difficult for most people to understand why someone in an abusive domestic relationship would not leave the person who was abusing them. This influences the other problems listed above. For instance, a man who is brought to court is accused by his wife of abusing her for a period of twenty years. She has some photos of bruising as evidence, but there are no witnesses to any of the attacks, and no record of injuries requiring hospitalization. The husband calls several character witnesses in his defense, and claims that his wife is alleging abuse with a view to winning a more favorable divorce settlement. It would be difficult enough for the prosecution to win such a case, but the defense also has the powerful counter -- "well, if he was such an abusive monster, why did his wife stay with him for twenty years?"
Hmmmm . . . this post is getting longer than I intended. However, you get the point -- there are many, many reasons why domestic abuse remains a serious social problem, and your essay needs to deal with more of them than it currently does if it is to be effective.