Shifting Power for Battered Women: Law, Material Resources, and Poor Women of Color

This Essay treats as central the experiences of Latinas and other women of color who are battered by intimate partners and suggests a test for evaluating anti-domestic violence law and policy that builds on those experiences. I argue that any proposed anti-domestic violence law or policy should be subjected to a material resources test, with the result that priority should be given to those laws and policies which improve women’s access to material resources. Further, because women’s circumstances differ in ways that dramatically affect their access to material resources, the standard for determining the impact on material resources should be the situation of women in the greatest need who are most dramatically affected by inequalities of gender, race, and class. In other words, poor women and, in many circumstances, poor women of color should provide the standard of measurement. Adoption of a material resource test addresses four problems of current domestic violence policy: the lack of attention in research and policy to the importance of race and ethnicity in shaping women’s experiences of battering and the institutional responses they receive; the tendency to ignore the ways in which poverty makes women more vulnerable to domestic violence; the development of increasingly punitive responses to batterers without evidence of increased benefits for battered women; the pervasive and incorrect assumption that separation from an abuser guarantees safety for battered women, or is the only desirable response

Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harm

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Heat of Passion and Wife Killing: Men Who Batter/Men Who Kill

I apply the body of social science data and feminist theory regarding domestic violence to reexamine heat-of-passion/adultery law. The article is organized around two central points. First, law implies a dubious distinction between men who premeditate the murder of wives and lovers, and “innocent” men who catch their wives in bed with someone. This distinction does not accurately describe husband-to-wife homicides. Second, there is a remarkable similarity between the social understandings that underlie important elements of voluntary manslaughter's heat-of-passion doctrine and the excuses and justifications that abusive men give to explain their violence. This congruence between how abusive men perceive their violence and the legal doctrine of voluntary manslaughter perpetuates two major misconceptions about the nature of wife-killing. The first misconception follows from the belief that violence in response to a wife's provocation -- in this context, the wife's adulterous conduct--is an uncontrollable response, which in turn reinforces the belief that intervention can have little deterrence or prevention impact. The second misconception follows from the congruence between the justifications given by abusive men and the quasi-justificatory elements of voluntary manslaughter doctrine: the wife-killer who kills in response to his wife's “provocative” conduct is seen as an unlikely recidivist and therefore less dangerous. I include a close examination of a California case that appears in many criminal law textbooks, People v. Berry. The California Supreme Court in Berry overturned a first degree murder conviction by finding that the trial court's failure to give a voluntary manslaughter instruction was reversible error. The Court’s reasoning demonstrates the deleterious effect of the resonance between the excuses and justifications given by abusive men and the cultural (mis)understandings that underlie modern heat-of-passion/adultery doctrine

A Call for an Intersectional Feminist Restorative Justice Approach to Addressing the Criminalization of Black Girls

(Excerpt) The persistent criminalization and pathologizing of Black youth in the U.S. educational system is a fundamental driver for their entry into the criminal legal system. Despite decades of evidence of the far-reaching harms of the “school-to-prison pipeline” and, more recently, demands from Black Lives Matter activists to defund school police, the role of schools in criminalizing Black girls has been left out of mainstream academic discourse. This occurs even though Black girls experience some of the most subjective and discriminatory practices in schools and evidence of an upward trend in discipline disparities since the mid-2000s. For Black girls with disabilities the data reveals an even starker picture: Black girls are five times more likely to be suspended than are white, nondisabled girls and Black girls experience the highest disparity for rates of referrals to law enforcement at six times more than white, nondisabled girls. The absence of Black girls from the larger portrait of youth criminalization and anti-criminalization efforts is sadly not surprising. Across multiple fields, scholars and advocates, have failed to fundamentally embed intersectional approaches into their work. A rich body of literature critically explores systemic, structural, and individual drivers of disparate outcomes, but this approach is not representative of the dominant theory and research guiding practice or policy. We argue that such examinations are fundamental if one seeks to name and dismantle youth criminalization as a form of systemic oppression. In this Article we focus our attention on school-based restorative justice (“RJ”) as presenting a critical area for embedding intersectional frameworks and approaches at the levels of movement, practice, policy, and law reform. RJ is a primary intervention to prevent youth criminalization in schools. RJ has been adopted in school contexts with positive outcomes ranging from diminished reliance on punitive discipline to promoting protective health factors. Though the empirical literature is limited, this Article draws on three studies to underscore the potential of RJ to place Black girls at the center of what should be the anti-criminalization and RJ discourse. This Article concludes with a call for research that further examines the efficacy of RJ to promote the well-being of Black girls. Simply put, this Article is a call for change, not only in the disparate impact of school criminalization practices on Black girls, but to the unidimensional approach to reform. There is an urgency to simultaneously dismantle harmful norms in schools, confront intersectional oppression, and prioritize the resilience and well-being of Black girls

Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harm

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Violence Against Women in Sierra Leone: Frequency and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence and Forced Sexual Intercourse

Violence against women is a significant public health problem which impacts women, men, and children. Little is known about the frequency or correlates of violence against women in Africa. In this cross-sectional study, we found that 66.7% of 144 women surveyed in a study of AIDS knowledge, attitude, and behaviours, report being beaten by an intimate male partner and 50.7% report having ever been forced to have sexual intercourse; 76.6% of women report either forced sex or intimate partner violence. Circumcised women were most likely to report intimate partner violence and forced sexual intercourse. To improve the health of women worldwide, violence against women must be addressed