The fundamental scientific and public discourse on domestic violence has experienced a certain Copernican revolution in the last few decades ‒ from an almost invisible phenomenon seen merely as private matter, domestic violence gained its more noticeable content and form in the 20th century, ultimately becoming a phenomenon worthy of both scientific attention and political focus. The civil rights movement and the associated women’s liberation movement, which constitutes a fundamental paradigm shift in focusing strongly on protecting victims of domestic violence, greatly contributed to such an understanding. The relative immaturity of the mentioned phenomenon (in terms of its chronological conceptualization) has caused a certain amount of confusion when trying to conceptualize and define domestic violence, while its characteristic as a ‘social’ phenomenon makes it strongly dependant on cultural patterns and moral values, thus representing a significant obstacle in the unequivocal determination of its content. However, given the fact that conceptualising a certain phenomenon is a prerequisite for its adequate standardization and for creating an optimal strategy for its suppression, the challenges deriving from the above mentioned will be elaborated in the introduction of this thesis. The change in perception of domestic violence is also accompanied by normative changes, which are characterized, at a global level, by overregulation with a strong focus on protecting women; at the domestic level the change is visible through normative dissonance and numerous practical challenges associated with it. The aim of this thesis is to offer an overview of the normative development of domestic violence in the Republic of Croatia with a focus on detecting main deficiencies of the current normative framework, which is characterized by a dichotomy of the subject phenomenon between its misdemeanour and criminal form. The main deficiency of the aforementioned legal framework was manifested through its practical application, in terms of the lack of clear criteria by which cases of domestic violence would be clearly and unequivocally marked either as a misdemeanour or as a criminal offense. Such a normative approach has questionable justification on a scientific level and also raises the question of whether such a choice of model contributes to a greater protection of victims of domestic violence or whether it is a mere expression of penal populism and erroneous ideas about how numerous regulations will contribute to a more adequate prevention and better protection. A special chapter of this thesis is devoted to a comparative presentation of the normative regulation of domestic violence with the aim of analysing legal models of protection against violence, which can serve as a useful tool for designing new and different legislative solutions. The question of adequacy of the Croatian legal framework for combating domestic violence came to the centre of public discourse again in 2018, when the Republic of Croatia ratified the so-called Istanbul Convention. The practice of the European Court of Human Rights will continue to play a much more important role for the Croatian courts, as well as the legislator and, therefore, an additional chapter of this thesis is devoted to the analysis of European standards. The normative-analytical part of this thesis concludes with a criminological analysis of domestic violence, offering an insight into the basic phenomenological determinants of this phenomenon in the Republic of Croatia, as well as statistical data related to sentencing practice in domestic violence cases. The empirical part of this thesis contains a synthesis and an analysis of the results of the originally designed research, which seeks to verify two hypotheses: When dealing with cases of domestic violence in practice, there is not a clear and uniform set of criteria for determining whether domestic violence should be categorised as a misdemeanour or as a criminal offense (H1) and the current normative framework provided for domestic violence in the Republic of Croatia does not have its stronghold in scientific justification, nor does it represent an adequate way of protecting victims of domestic violence (H2). Following chapter of this thesis will offer normative solutions de lege ferenda as well as pro futuro solutions for criminal policy and research improvement. Such solutions are based on analysed theoretical considerations, comparative models and empirical findings of the conducted research, while respecting the phenomenological particularities of the criminological and victimological context of domestic violence in the Republic of Croatia. The doctoral thesis ends with concluding remarks on domestic violence.