THE DEBATE

NO

LEIGH GOODMARK Leigh is the Marjorie Cook Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey Law faculty. She is the author of Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate

Partner Violence.

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IS CRIMINALIZATION THE RIGHT RESPONSE TO

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Are legal punishments an effective way to tackle domestic violence, or are they failing to go to the heart of the problem? Leigh Goodmark and

Stella Nyanzi go head to head.

LEIGH: For the last 40 years, criminalization has been the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States. Anti-violence feminists touted criminalization as the remedy for police and prosecutors’ failure to treat this phenomenon as they would other crimes and championed policies that required police to make arrests and prosecutors to pursue any case where they had sufficient evidence to do so. But criminalization has not lowered rates of intimate partner violence in the United States, and there is little to no evidence that arrest, prosecution, conviction or incarceration deters intimate partner violence. What the social science evidence does highlight is how criminalization exacerbates conditions that correlate with intimate partner violence. Male under- and unemployment is among the biggest risk factors for intimate partner violence.

STELLA: Criminalization of domestic violence is important because it defines a crime and identifies the specific ingredients of actions between intimate partners which are criminal. By outlining the boundaries of what is criminal, the law makes it impossible for perpetrators of domestic violence to feign ignorance of their abuse. Naming and including the different aspects of domestic violence into the statutes, penal code and other laws of a society provides a necessary fundamental framework for stakeholders (including victims, lawyers, prosecutors, police, investigators, magistrates and other judicial officers) to identify a specific crime that has verifiable evidence and a range of possible penalties. Arrest and prosecution facilitate identification of perpetrators through investigative interviews. Socialpsychological and psychiatric assessments can reveal why violence occurs and lead to either conviction, sentencing, and/or further referral outside the

Criminalization makes it harder to find and keep work, increases economic stress and contributes to community instability. Incarceration in particular is traumatic. Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder are linked to the perpetration of intimate partner violence. Criminalization has had the unintended consequence of increasing the number of women charged as criminal defendants – many of them victims of intimate partner violence.

MALE UNDER- AND UNEMPLOYMENT IS AMONG THE BIGGEST RISK FACTORS FOR INTIMATE PARTNER

VIOLENCE — LEIGH

criminal system. When imprisoned, perpetrators diagnosed with substance abuse or psychosis are by default entered into prison rehabilitation programmes supervised by government psychiatrists. Criminalization opens a door to legal processes of seeking redress and justice for the victim/survivor, and punishment, retribution or restraining orders for the perpetrator; thereby offering

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