Police Encounters as Institutional Learning Moments: A Systematic Review of Intimate Partner Violence Victims' Experiences and Institutional Avoidance of the Police.

Despite decades of research on intimate partner violence (IPV), victims' disengagement from police has been largely framed as a failure of help-seeking rather than a rational response to institutional experience. This systematic review challenges that framing by synthesizing evidence on IPV victims' direct interactions with police and the resulting effects on subsequent engagement or avoidance. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines, records were identified through searches of Web of Science, Criminal Justice Abstracts, SocINDEX, and ProQuest, supplemented by citation and author searching. Eligible studies were published between January 1970 and December 2025 and examined direct victim-police interaction with a measured post-interaction engagement or avoidance outcome; study quality was appraised using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Of 3,068 records identified, 26 studies met inclusion criteria and were synthesized to reconceptualize institutional avoidance as a strategic and context-dependent decision shaped by victims' evaluations of police encounters. The findings are organized around three analytic domains: the nature and quality of police interactions, victims' evaluative interpretations and trust calibration, and subsequent engagement or avoidance decisions. The review identifies four distinct pathways through which victims respond to police encounters: continued engagement, criminalization avoidance, institutional harm avoidance, and constrained re-engagement. A conceptual framework is proposed in which police encounters function as institutional learning moments that inform victims' rational assessments of police as a source of protection or risk. Understanding institutional avoidance as a strategic response to police encounters has critical implications for policing practices, officer training, and victim-centered intervention.