Inter- and Intra- Court Disparities in Protection Orders for Cases of Gender-Based Violence in Catalonia

• In Event: Cumulative (Dis)advantage, (Dis)trust, and Sanctioning Disparities 2: Ecological Dimensions in European and American Contexts

Abstract

Protection orders for victims of gender-based violence are an important tool to protect women in situations of risk. According to Spanish Criminal Procedure Law, they should be adopted when there is both well-founded evidence of a crime and an objective risk for the woman. However, research shows large disparities in concession rates in different parts of Spain, which cannot be explained by objective differences in victimisation but may be related to population density and associated difficulties in access to justice. This research focusses on the autonomous community of Catalonia, which has the lowest rate of concession, and quantitatively and qualitatively analyses 812 sentences for appeals against the concession or denial in the first instance judgment of a protection order in cases of gender-based violence. We focus on appeals for methodological and substantive reasons: on the one hand, appeals are heard by provincial courts, meaning many of the judgements are publicly available in PDF; on the other hand, the higher courts may correct judgements made in lower courts and provide fundamental guidelines for first instance proceedings. Our results show that corrections are uncommon, and appeals are more likely to remove a protection order that was initially granted. However, we find notable differences between courts and even between chambers within the same court, which is mainly due to some judges in large urban provinces applying an overly demanding interpretation of the requirements established in the Criminal Procedure Law. We also find the position of the public prosecutor to be highly correlated with the outcome and, to a lesser extent, the age of the judge. Our findings suggest that provincial courts in Catalonia often act as individual “social worlds” with worrying consequences for victims of gender-based violence: the outcome of a protection order request often depends on where the victim lives.

Authors

• Steven Kemp, University of Girona

• Cristina Vasilescu, University of Girona

• Daniel Varona, University of Girona