Women’s Rights-Based NGO Workers in India and Their Interactions with the Criminal-Legal System

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 6: Gender, Sexuality, and Crime

Abstract

This paper examines how women’s rights-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) navigate and negotiate the Indian criminal-legal system in the eastern state of West Bengal. The five NGOs discussed in the paper focus on a wide variety of issues including women’s political and economic development, supporting disabled women, or offering help to victims of domestic or marital violence. The interviewees for this paper provide legal aid, mental health support, and hands-on assistance in navigating police stations and courtrooms as a part of their work. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with these NGO representatives, the paper highlights a shared critique of the criminal-legal system that emerges from their lived experiences of working with survivors and seeking intervention from the criminal-legal system. Interviewees repeatedly raised concerns about police refusal to register complaints of sexual or domestic violence, as well as pervasive victim-blaming practices. Access to justice is further constrained by the physical and procedural inaccessibility of police stations and courts for many survivors. Importantly, many of these NGO workers are also survivors themselves, shaping both their critique of the system and their approach to advocacy.

Author

• Sukanya Bhattacharya, University of Tennessee-Knoxville