Examining the State Response to Domestic Violence: An Analysis of Partner Abuse Intervention

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Responses to Gendered Violence

Abstract

In the 1960s-1970s, the battered women’s movement mobilized to demand that the state intervenes to address domestic violence. While activists believed that eliminating violence required broad social change, the sanctioning of perpetrators quickly became a priority. Today, the state response to domestic violence has become a large-scale operation involving police forces, courts, probation offices as well as partner abuse intervention programs (PAIPs). In this paper, I focus on one of the state’s main tools to prevent domestic violence: PAIPs. I analyze the tensions that characterize the implementation of domestic violence policy, focusing on the conflicts around the defining of domestic violence, and in particular, of perpetrators. More precisely, I analyze how PAIP facilitators re-negotiate the goals of partner abuse intervention when confronted with a clientele that doesn’t fit their understanding of who domestic violence perpetrators are. I discuss the consequences on the lives of PAIP participants, and on the state’s ability to effectively prevent domestic violence.

Author

• Marie Laperrière, Northwestern University