THE CRIMINALIZATION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE : Promises and Limits PART 9 : "THE COMPLEXITY OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE" : Compared with many other violent crimes, the legal and social dimensions of domestic violence present several complications for effective legal control. Domestic violence differs significantly from other forms of violence in several important ways. First, there are strong emotional ties between victims and assailants. The parties often love one another, or at least the victim may love the assailant. The bond may be traumatic (Dutton and Browning, 1988), complicating victim resolve to enter into a lengthy adversarial proceeding to invoke punishments and creating internal conflict regarding separation. The resolve to enter into a lengthy adversarial proceeding to invoke punishments and creating internal conflict regarding separation. The victim may be financially dependent on the assailant or may face a severely diminished standard of living if separated. Arguably, she faces an economic life at or below the official threshold of poverty upon leaving the relationship (Sidel, 1986). These ties to assailants may lead victims toward rational objectives in invoking legal sanctions. Thus, they may be less concerned with deterrence than they are with using legal institutions to guarantee their own safety, survive economically, protect their children, or get counseling help for their assailants (Ford, 1991). They may also see the threat of prosecution as a means of terminating the relationship and escaping the violence (Lerman, 1992). Thus, victim choices about invoking legal sanctions may be less concerned with punishment and deterrence and ultimately seek to sue the law for other goals. The social control functions of the law are compromised in this context even when victim choices and well-being are optimized. Second, domestic violence often is a recurring event between individuals in daily contact, usually without the forms of guardianship and surveillance that are available in public spaces. Unlike robberies, in which victims and offenders often are unacquainted, or other assaults involving acquaintances, victims and assailants often occupy the same space, share and compete for resources, and have emotional ties. In this context, threats are readily conveyed and quite believable. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to mount and maintain a deterrent threat within a context of ongoing and unsupervised contact between victim and assailant. Third, the scale of domestic violence makes it difficult to control solely through legal sanctions and deterrent threats. The base rates remain quite high relative to other violent crimes, with self-reported domestic assault prevalence rates of at least 10 percent for both men and women (Straus and Gelles, 1986). Prevalence rates exceed 30 percent for some subgroups. Domestic violence rates are highest among subgroups who also have high rates of stranger violence, further burdening limited police resources within spiral areas where assaults are concentrated (Fagan, 1993. Many cases are unreported, and estimates of the extent of reporting to the police are as low as 20 percent (Dutton, 1995). However, those who do report appear to be individuals who have few non-legal resources for protection or deterrence (Bowker, 1983). Even if reporting were not increased, the high rates of domestic violence make it difficult for police departments to arrest every man who commits a misdemeanor or felony assault against his partner, much less to arrest him every time he does it, without paralyzing their own agencies and the courts. In the face of a high base crime rate, police departments are challenged to maintain a credible deterrent threat in cases where arrests do not occur. Finally, the deterrence logic of criminalization assumes a rational offender-actor who weighs the costs of offending--costs associated both with the act itself and the legal actions that ensue--against whatever benefits that may accrue from the behavior (Miller and Anderson, 1986; Fagan, 1992). This logic is strained in the context of domestic violence. Although domestic violence has been interpreted as a goal-oriented and implicitly rational behavior (Tedeschi and Felson, 1995), episodes of rage during more serious assaults often obviate rational calculations and perceptions of costs (Browne, 1987). Studies with batterers in treatment suggest conditions of impaired cognition or mental disorder (Dutton, 1995). The logic of deterrence is comprised among batterers whose behavior is patterned over time and for whom rational calculations are not possible during the arousal of a violent assault. Domestic violence is unique in the concentration of risk factors and absence of formal controls for violence. Only the reciprocity between legal and informal social controls makes possible the control of domestic violence in general. Among violent men whose behaviors are increasingly spiraling out of control, the threat of punishment may be remote and inconsequential under conditions of arousal and cognitive distortion.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:36:10 +0000
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