Problem-solving courts(drug courts, juvenile courts, etc.) aim to be holistic and bring a set team of prosecutors, one judge and social service agencies who help defendants. I specifically would like to focus our discussion on domestic violence courts. In domestic violence courts, the defendant and the victim share or shared an intimate bond. Domestic violence cases may involve children and a victim who is economically, legally(immigration cases) and emotionally dependant upon her batterer. A point to note is that it usually takes women seven to eight times before they leave an abusive relationship.
A little history of domestic violence courts. Because of ground-breaking legislation in the 1990s on domestic violence, the 1994 Family Act and Violence Against Women Act were passed and the first domestic violence court in Brooklyn was created. The Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court was very successful where the Urban Institue of Justice concluded that eight years after the opening of the domestic violence court, no victim linked to an open case was killed.
Even though, this is a true success, we must keep in mind that many women do return to their batterers and they make logical choices to do so. I never thought before interning with Safe Horizon at the Integrated Domestic Violence Court in Queens, that the same problem-solving courts fail some women and compel them to return to their batterers. First of all, a domestic violence victim never presses charges against her batterer; legally, only the state may press charges in a criminal case. Therefore, this translates into more rights for her batterer and less rights for her. In cases where women have children, it is a civil case where she has to find an attorney to represent her. Here comes the structural violence, Legal Aid, one of the free-legal service providers is mandated by the government to not represent undocumented women. Eventhough, immigrant women are more likely to be in danger from intimate partner violence than non-immigrant women. Furthermore, many women who take the step to leave their batterers are seeking a validation from the legal system that they suffered. However, they feel disappointed when the same court holds up that even though they were violently abused by their partners, that does not terminate a father's right to see his children. One of the inherent principles of our courts is the right to parent. This means that just becuase he violently beat his partner, it does not mean that he is a bad father; eventhough, research in domestic violence has shown that child abuse and domestic violence are comborbid. This is what I would like to know your thoughts on, do you think our courts truly keep in mind and base decisions on the reality of a victims circumstances and what they really need? Furthermore, can courts ever really be an answer for issues such as domestic violence or is society just putting a band-aid on a bleeding wound?Moreso, should victims trust a court system that is set in place by the same system that has set in place the same structures(sexism, racism, barriers to economic opportunities, education) that leaves them vulnerable and dependent on their batterer? If courts and the criminal justice system are not a good answer, than what other answers do we have?
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Wow. I'm a bit at a loss as to how to respond to your very important and clearly stated questions, Darakshan. You lay out the issues in such a way as to make very clear that as long as the big issues (class, gender, race/ethnicity, and other inequalities) don't get resolved, that our solutions will themselves have "unintended" consequences and will always be partial. This doesn't mean we don't operate within the system--I think we must, and must do rigorous assessments of these contradictions, implications, consequences and find the best solutions (partial victories) while recognizing the obstacles within which these solutions operate. We need to keep working for a more just society at the same time as we struggle to work within the system. I asked Professor Reitz to post an interview with the much maligned Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn (here's the link: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/14/exclusive_in_first_joint_broadcast_interview). They have some really important things to say about lessons we can learn from the social change movements of the 1960s, and about how we are in a very special, particular historical moment right now. I believe the young people--you guys--can really make it happen--make a difference in terms of the inequalities that are so entrenched because there's opportunity right now, at this particular historical moment. So many young people came out to vote this past November 4th. Those huge numbers do not constitute a movement in and of itself, but has the potential to be transformed into a youth movement for social change.
I am so sorry to miss this week's class and can't wait to hear about it. And I'll keep an eye on the blog too!
Darakshan, you bring us full circle to the first seminar class, where the conundrum was highlighted: what happens when you provide services but the clients cannot utilize them because they have long ago internalized the message of hopelessness? Of course, you push the envelope even further, in asking how the criminal justice system can provide fair releif to all interested stakeholders in a situation of domestic violence: the battered woman, the father asserting parental rights, the children who may or may not want visitation with a parent, the harried case worker, the public.
In New York, we started making mandatory arrests for DV and having the state prosecute because so many women would not pursure assault charges against their lovers/breadwinners/co-parents; as you point out, this has brought other unintended negative consequences. (Sometimes, under the new mandatory arrest laws, the unintended consequence is that the battered woman herself is prosecuted for not protecting her children from witnessing violence!)
The pendulum swings: In the seventies, we took children away from violent families and placed them in a variety of settings: some good, some bad. Then, in the eighties, we decided to repatriate families rather than farming children out to foster care (a valiant effort, well-intentioned) and ended up with higher rates of violence than before because we did it without providing multi-modal supportive interventions to the biological families taking the children back.
I think that even if we made headway in the bigger social arena, certain problems would still be intractible and require the close work that is going to be impossible without a degree of surveillance that is antithetical to our core values as Americans. The "unanticipated consequence" of prizing cultural heterogeneity and protecting privacy is that we can't always provide the care that people really need.
Please excuse the typos in my post. I accidentally clicked "publish" instead of "preview": an unintended consequence of working overtime!
Darakshan this is a really well-thought post on a topic that's personal to each and everyone of us. Whether or not we've been victim too or have been associated with domestic abuse, as women, the unfair treatment of the courts and the batterers themselves is something that needs to be changed. To completely overhaul a court system like this overnight will never happen but I believe that the country is already taking baby steps into change.
I actually showed this post to my sisters, and they both had no idea that courts were so unfair, even though several of my cousins have been victims of domestic abuse and have gone through court systems to fight for their rights. Society needs a wake-up call and needs these types of facts and statistics to be shown in bold before they realize that a change needs to take place. For example, the problems with the financial industry today have been in the works for years but until it was thrown into the media, most people had no clue what was going on. Now that we have the facts of today's economic situation, we've taken the steps into hopefully creating a huge change by voting for Obama. I believe it just takes time and effort, particularly on the part of young adults, like ourselves. With each of us supporting causes like domestic violence and showing society how these court systems really work, we can cause a change against this type of structural violence.
This is no doubt a serious issue and should be treated as such. While I believe the domestic violence court system is overwhelmed, and therefore may not devote adequate time and resources to each domestic violence case. I firmly contend that domestic violence cases should remain in the courts, because there need to be defendant accountability. We should also be reminded that we the people are the court system. Therefore we the people can construct the system to better serve its constituent. We need innovative ideas to deal with complex issues such as domestic violence. As professor Waterston stated, young people have the power (proven by this historic election) to make a difference.
A big part of the solution, however, is the empowerment of women through education and equal opportunity. It is also important to address many unresolved issues, such as immigration, drugs and unemployment. We must also know that while we are all different and are from different backgrounds, we share the same concerns. And so, we must embrace all issues, regardless if it directly affects us or not. When we start thinking as one people, we begin to work in a concerted effort so that we are all protected.
I absolutely believe the courts (specialized courts) can be an answer to specific domestic violence issues, though not the answer to domestic violence on the whole. I agree that domestic violence cases need to be kept in the court. I would like to believe that “we the people are the court,” but from my experience in courts this does not seem to be the case. However, it is my opinion that the domestic violence courts (as well as the other specialized courts Greg Berman discusses) do a better job at “making the people the court.” I had the privilege of working at the Center for Court Innovation last summer, and so I worked alongside those individuals who are dedicated to researching and improving the DV courts. They know that these courts are not perfect; but they can serve as a means to a solution. They are diligently working and listening to help the courts improve. Most importantly, these are people who are extremely knowledgeable about domestic violence situations, which I think is one of the key aspects to being able to help domestic violence victims and perpetrators. It might sound obvious that those people who work with DV courts be well-rehearsed on DV situations, but there are so many court players who are not knowledgeable about their client’s situations. DV situations are incredibly complex, and we must remember that batterer programs are not known to be effective. Until (or if) effective programs are identified, I think it is important to continue to try whatever programs that are available (so long as they are not harmful.)
Wow! Thank you everyone, all of your comments are amazing. Prof. Waterson,I do believe that a youth movement can happen and hopefully it will. However, this brings me back to a conference I attended last year where Muhammad Yunus who came up with the idea of microcredit finance said in front of me that my generation had no dream and that we were disconnected from our past becuase we were more concerned with materialistic things. However, right afterwards, Betty Williams made me promise her that I would work for social change so I was really happy. I found it really interesting becuase I wonder how much of an effort have preceeding generations made to reach out the current and future generations and help us learn from their experiences and how much my generation reaches out to preceeding generations to learn from their experiences who have worked so hard to gain social movements. Prof. Stein, yes it is coming back full circle, things are too grey in the real world. What you referred to as the reason why we have the state press charges rather than the victim is exactly what the ADA from Queens Domestic Violence Bureau told me. Just to add on to what Prof. Stein, the ADA told me that last year a team of only 4 attorneys and a couple of interns prosecuted 5000 cases from the 12000 arrests that were made in Queens. That they will now prosecute a case even if the victim does not at all want to press charges. Now, they actually have a ankle bracelet system that is placed on batterers that will alert the victim if he is in a certain distance from her via text and phone call and alerts the police officers.
Ridhi, thanks for sharing it with your sisters. Yes, domestic violence touches us personally and I hope everything worked/works out with your cousins. You are absolutely right, society needs to talk about it. Actually domestic violence happens at a rate of 90%in South Asian communities where it may not only come from the husband but his family members as well. Kerry-ann and Amanda, I agree we should have domestic violence courts and people are very dedicated in improving these courts. Yes, education and empowerment are key but then there is a point where the structure is set up in such a way that if she is not deprived of economical and empowerment opportunities then somewhere in her life she feels she must sacrifice these opportunities for family and relationships or she prioritizes these relationships above her own success.
Once again I'm incredibly impressed by the Vera seminar blog. Not only does everyone write in thoughtfully, thoroughly and from the heart but everyone makes the efforts to make connections between past issues, reading assignments and work experiences. You sure do make a teacher's life easy!
I think Darakshan and co. have reframed a question for us that is of ongoing concern to this seminar and especially this week when reading about problem-solving courts: what does work, why does it work and how can we extend that model/those successes to help more people (sort of like the wide influence of that microcredit idea that Darakshan mentioned). In fact what would be the equivalent of the idea of microcredit in the criminal justice system? Local problem-solving courts?
p.s. remember to bring a question to/about/for Greg Berman and GOOD COURTS to class tomorrow.
p.p.s. in solidarity with Professor Stein, I am not going back to check this comment for typos.
I am not very familiar with Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence cases, but from what I do know, I see some pretty important questions.
1. Your question about whether or not courts are the right place for DV/IPV cases alludes to how terrible the system can be to folks in it. My response to that question is: can we get "fair and impartial" juries on IPV cases, esepcially when child custody is involved?
A professor of mine, Professor Marrone, is a sociologist who studies violence against women. She mentioned in class that it often happens that custody is awarded to the batterer, because the batterer often comes off looking more stable financially and/or emotionally. Can trials (in general) with juries that are untrained to the issues involved administer justice? Are our juries equipped to deal with the complexity of these cases?
I know a decision by judges violates this little document- our constitution- but constitutuional issues aside, judges (or juries?) trained in IPV issues operating in IPV courts may be a better solution for victims.
2- I think the problem of the "second victimization" is HUGE, and tremendously overlooked. Thank you for bringing it up, I hope we get to discuss it more in the future.
3- Lastly, I think the language typically used to talk about this type of violence alienates victims who aren't women and gives power to perpetrators that aren't men.
I think even the smallest changes in the way we use language or think about IPV can have important effects on how victims view themselves, or in their decision to seek help.
Professor Waterston, Thank you for posting that link to the Democracy Now interview. It's about time Bill Ayers gets to clear his name!
When you mentioned that in South Asian communities domestic violence rate is around 90%, I could not stop thinking that domestic violence is not an ordinary crime. It is also a cultural crime. And that makes it even harder to combat it or even reduce it. The same way Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, these people beat their wives and children. These communities see nothing wrong in what they do because it is deep embedded in their culture. Maybe, in their countries domestic violence is not even a crime. Think about female genital mutilation; it’s a crime in U.S. but it is a regular practice in some African countries.
Two semesters ago I wrote a paper on Guyana and I had to interview some people. One of the questions was what is their favorite think to do? And, I could not believe their answer. More than one man said that they drink rum and beat their wives. I was stunned. When I tell them that in America that’s a crime, they said it is not a problem. They will put their wives on a plane and then they will go to Guyana and beat them.
The problem is that even for the women that do not feel that this is the way to be treated the system is not there for them. How Darakshan explain, most victims are dependent on their batterer. Even though, problem-solving courts are not the ultimate solution to domestic violence, they are a good beginning. These courts speed up the process and help the victim feel safer. I also like the idea that they monitor the offender. I think that the state should prosecute all the domestic violence cases, even if the victim does not want to press charges (this may be already happening but I do not know for sure).
For the victims it is always harder. If they do not trust the current system, what other option do they have? Until we find other alternatives, this is their only chance to fight back. I think we should create more awareness organizations and organizations to help the victims and the batterer. We should have clips on TV that show the implication of domestic violence and the options victims have. Definitely all victims should be treated equal, not according to their migration status. Maybe a way of monitoring these people, the same way we do for sex offenders, is a good approach. It is hard to find a system that everybody would embrace and consider fair. We should make the best of what we have.
Unfortunately, whatever the intentions of the courts are in domestic violence issues, they seem to be failing. It struck me that we consider it a feat that no woman whose case was open in the Brooklyn Domestic Violence Court was killed in eight years. This is an indicator of not only the seriousness of the problem, but also the confined and degraded sense of hope that even we, as students of justice, fall victim to. The courts are probably very realistic and practical in their approach, whereas we tend to have more ideal and sometimes abstract opinions. The courts probably need very real, tangible, measurable and financial goals. Perhaps this is why they speak in terms of the lack of domestic violence victims killed. Whereas we would ask, how many offenders completed programs successfully, how many former victims reported the abuse stopped?
With such deeply rooted cultural and social issues, there are limits as to what the courts can reasonably hope to achieve. Many of the policies surrounding domestic violence cases are discriminatory. Overhauling these policies could mean reform of the whole country’s policies, or even overwhelming the stressed system with simply too many cases. Either way, the courts will always be limited by overarching governmental policy and financial and resource restrictions. Further, the courts can mandate changes but social change itself is often slow to follow, if it does at all.
Ultimately, I don’t see the courts as a very effective way of combating domestic violence. I think that by the time the cases reach the courts they’ve already gone too far. Once again, it seems as though educating people from an early age could help to break the cycle of domestic violence. These issues need to be addressed before the abuse starts, but this is especially difficult since culture and other factors may play crucial roles in their causation.
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