County over Content: Governing Factors of Civil Protection Orders

• In Event: 600 - Section on Crime, Law and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Gender, Violence, and Public Space

Abstract

Civil protection orders can prohibit abusers from contacting victims, require abusers to vacate the parties’ shared residence, award victims temporary custody of minor children and potentially determine victims’ access to transportation and financial resources. Given these consequences, this paper seeks to understand the social processes behind the issuance or denial of civil protection orders. By focusing on the context of victims’ legal outcomes and the institutions that dispense them, this paper facilitates discussion of cultural conceptions of gender within legal institutions and contributes to the broader dialogue of the social phenomenon of intimate partner violence. A dataset compiled of petitions, praecipes, and court rulings allows the examination of victim characteristics, their abusers, and the judges who hear their cases. Textual analysis highlights which salient factors predict petitioners’ legal outcomes. This project tests theoretically grounded hypotheses to reveal whether victims’ self-presentations in petitions, the severity or recency of abuse, or the household children witnessing incidents of violence affect the issuance of civil protection orders. However, preliminary results reveal an unexpected variable determining petitioners’ legal outcomes. This paper finds it is not the content of victims’ court documents that matters, but rather where they file.

Author

• Anne Groggel, Indiana University