State Intervention into Intimate Partner Violence: How State Paternalism Structures Women’s Agency

• In Event: Roundtable: Sexual Violence

Abstract

In this theoretical paper, I use the case of Domestic Abuse No Contact Orders (DANCO) in Minnesota to explore how the agency of women who experience intimate partner violence is structured under paternalistic state interventions, like mandatory arrest policies, no drop prosecution policies, and the implementation of DANCOs. DANCOs restrict all contact between the alleged victim and defendant. I ask, how do DANCOs constrain and enable women’s abilities to make decisions and act on those decisions? More broadly, how does state paternalism restrict or foster women’s autonomy? To begin answering these questions, I engage theories on state paternalism, neoliberal rationalities, and relational agency and autonomy. The interventions I discuss are part of a larger shift in state rationalities that utilize neoliberal reasoning. Polices like mandatory arrests reduce the discretion of court actors and law enforcement, but in doing so also reduce women’s capacities to make decisions in how they want to proceed. However, they do not close off all options and thus, they may foster agency in some ways.

Author

• Allison Nobles, University of Minnesota