Legal Experiences of Women Survivors of Domestic Violence: A Need for Policies that Address the Justice Gap

The problems associated with the civil legal system for women who have experienced domestic violence have been persistent over time and still exist today. The current sociopolitical context in this state frames access to civil legal services either through a means-tested (and underfunded) program (Civil Legal Assistance) or as a privately purchased market service. This leaves a limited amount of low- or no-cost alternatives, which creates a gap in services for those women whose income is too high to qualify for Civil Legal Assistance programs, yet too low to afford to hire a private attorney. This study examines this two-tiered system, and reveals that the alternative to full Civil Legal Assistance or individually purchased full-scale legal representation for women who fall into the services gap is a system that is confusing, faces a lack of coordination, and may lead to less than optimal outcomes in civil legal cases related to domestic violence. This study explores the workings of this system from the perspective of the women using it and the service providers within it. Through surveys of 18 women seeking civil legal assistance and 11 interviews with legal services advocates and providers, this research identifies the areas that remain problematic for women who experience domestic violence and turn to the civil legal services for help. By placing this study within the theoretical framework of feminist legal theory, and in particular dominance theory, some insight is shed on the potential public policy remedies that should be sought to address the problems associated with civil legal services. Dominance theory firmly asserts that gender inequality is the root of the problem of domestic violence, and that the historical legacy of patriarchy has created and sustained gender inequality in the social and legal institutions in our society. It is clear from my results that women face many barriers when attempting to access civil legal remedies for domestic violence, and that the process involved in utilizing civil legal services suffers from a consistent and pervasive lack of resources to address the problems and a lack of service coordination, which inhibit a woman\u27s ability to gain the services she needs to resolve issues around domestic violence. It is also clear that there are benefits that ensue from having access to high quality civil legal services, and that public policy should be utilized to address the gap in justice that women face. Dominance theory indicates that the resolution of some of these problems must come from an examination and a restructuring of the civil legal system. Three public policy implications of my research are explored. First, I examine the possibility of expanding the use of specialized courts, such as the Domestic Violence court that operates in Dorchester, Massachusetts. This approach represents a re-structuring of the legal system to address the specific issue of domestic violence. Next, I examine the role that community-based organizations play and the possibility of gaining operational efficiencies that will close the service gap. Last, I examine ways in which the gap in services and justice can be narrowed through policies that will increase the amount of resources available to address the problem. This study also provides a framework for future research on the intersection of law and domestic violence

Preventing Homelessness and Promoting Housing Stability: A Comparative Analysis

This final evaluation report is the culmination of a three-year investment of time, energy and resources involving 28 Massachusetts nonprofit organizations: 7 foundations, led by the Boston Foundation, The Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development; and Homes for Families which joined with the Center for Social Policy team to conduct 10 focus groups involving 72 parents and individuals who shared their perspectives on homelessness prevention, with the guidance of a consumer advisory board involving six persons who have experienced homelessness. Collectively, we engaged in this evaluation effort because we believed that the outcomes of interventions, practice experience of service providers, and the lived experiences of the families and individuals they served have meaning for improving service practices, changing public policies, and increasing public and private resources to prevent other Massachusetts households from falling into homelessness

Double parton correlations versus factorized distributions

Using the generalized Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi-Dokshitzer equations for the two-parton distribution functions we show numerically that the dynamical correlations contribute to these functions quite a lot in comparison with the factorized components. At the scale of CDF hard process ($\sim 5$ GeV) this contribution to the double gluon-gluon distribution is nearly 10% and increases right up to 30% at the LHC scale ($\sim 100$ GeV) for the longitudinal momentum fractions $x \leq 0.1$ accessible to these measurements. For the finite longitudinal momentum fractions $x \sim 0.2 \div 0.4$ the correlations are large right up to 90% in accordance with the predicted QCD asymptotic behaviour.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Double parton distributions in the leading logarithm approximation of perturbative QCD

Recent CDF measurements of the inclusive cross section for a double parton scattering attach a great importance to any theoretical calculations of two-particle distribution functions. Using a parton interpretation of the leading logarithm diagrams of perturbative QCD theory, generalized Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi-Dokshitzer equations for the two-parton distributions are re-obtained. The solutions of these equations are not at all the product of two single-parton distributions what is usually applied to the current analysis as ansatz.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe

Searching for doubly charged Higgs bosons in M\"{o}ller scattering by resonance effects at linear e−e−e^-e^- collider

We discuss the parity-violating left-right asymmetries (LRAs) in M\"{o}ller scattering at the International Linear Collider (ILC) induced by doubly charged Higgs bosons in models with $SU(2)_L$ triplet and singlet scalar bosons, which couple to the left- and right-handed charged leptons, respectively. These bosons are important in the scenarios for the generation of the neutrino mass. We demonstrate that the contributions to the LRAs from the triplet and singlet bosons are opposite to each other. In particular, we show that the doubly charged Higgs boson from the singlet scalar can be tested at the ILC by using the resonance effect.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; version published in Eur.Phys.J.C60:119-124,200

Legal experiences of women survivors of domestic violence: A need for policies that address the justice gap

The problems associated with the civil legal system for women who have experienced domestic violence have been persistent over time and still exist today. The current sociopolitical context in this state frames access to civil legal services either through a means-tested (and underfunded) program (Civil Legal Assistance) or as a privately purchased market service. This leaves a limited amount of low- or no-cost alternatives, which creates a gap in services for those women whose income is too high to qualify for Civil Legal Assistance programs, yet too low to afford to hire a private attorney. This study examines this two-tiered system, and reveals that the alternative to full Civil Legal Assistance or individually purchased full-scale legal representation for women who fall into the services gap is a system that is confusing, faces a lack of coordination, and may lead to less than optimal outcomes in civil legal cases related to domestic violence. This study explores the workings of this system from the perspective of the women using it and the service providers within it. Through surveys of 18 women seeking civil legal assistance and 11 interviews with legal services advocates and providers, this research identifies the areas that remain problematic for women who experience domestic violence and turn to the civil legal services for help. By placing this study within the theoretical framework of feminist legal theory, and in particular dominance theory, some insight is shed on the potential public policy remedies that should be sought to address the problems associated with civil legal services. Dominance theory firmly asserts that gender inequality is the root of the problem of domestic violence, and that the historical legacy of patriarchy has created and sustained gender inequality in the social and legal institutions in our society. It is clear from my results that women face many barriers when attempting to access civil legal remedies for domestic violence, and that the process involved in utilizing civil legal services suffers from a consistent and pervasive lack of resources to address the problems and a lack of service coordination, which inhibit a woman's ability to gain the services she needs to resolve issues around domestic violence. It is also clear that there are benefits that ensue from having access to high quality civil legal services, and that public policy should be utilized to address the gap in justice that women face. Dominance theory indicates that the resolution of some of these problems must come from an examination and a restructuring of the civil legal system. Three public policy implications of my research are explored. First, I examine the possibility of expanding the use of specialized courts, such as the Domestic Violence court that operates in Dorchester, Massachusetts. This approach represents a re-structuring of the legal system to address the specific issue of domestic violence. Next, I examine the role that community-based organizations play and the possibility of gaining operational efficiencies that will close the service gap. Last, I examine ways in which the gap in services and justice can be narrowed through policies that will increase the amount of resources available to address the problem. This study also provides a framework for future research on the intersection of law and domestic violence

Creating Realism in Fantasy through Visual Effects

My project is a self-produced short film that utilizes visual effects to help tell its story. The story focuses on a young boy who has terrible fear of the dark. Instead of facing his fear, he crawls under his covers with piles of books and reads them to escape his fear. One night, he reads a book about a terrible evil knight who throws a kingdom into darkness. While the boy is reading, the covers of his bed fly off of him, and he is on a hillside, with the evil knight’s castle in the distance. The boy has entered the world of the book, and ends up being forced into the castle to face his greatest fear, a personification of the dark in the form of an evil knight. The theme of the story is that your fears and real until you face them, and then you realize that they are nothing. The boy in the story can only defeat the knight, and his fear of the dark, once he stands his ground in front of the knight. Visual effects work the same way. As long as you don’t look too closely into a movie, visual effects seem real. If a movie is broken down, one can see how everything is put together, and realize that it is all an illusion and a trick. I liked this parallel, and thought that visual effects would be the best way to tell this story

A multi-Regge analysis of the exclusive and inclusive production of low-mass rho-pion systems

We construct a Reggeized Deck model for the exclusive reaction pi- rho -> rho o pi- rho that satisfies the Steinmann relation in the physical region. An explanation is given for the success of the Reggeization in this low-rho/pi-mass region. Resonancelike behavior is isolated in the P-1I-cut term, and a resonance-type loop is shown to be present in the l+s wave Argand diagram. We also consider in detail the multi-Regge expansion for the eight particle amplitude with one triple-Regge and two double-Regge couplings, appropriate to the inclusive reaction pi-rho -> rhoo pi- X. We show that under trivial conditions and with a suitable choice of helicity contours, the double-Regge couplings in the multi-Regge (MR) limit are identical, to leading order,with couplings obtained in the mixed helicity-pole Reggepole (HPRP) limit appropriate to inclusive reactions. As a plausibility argument for the identity of the MR and HPRP limit, we present an intuitive picture of a way in which helicity poles may be visualized at the triple-Regge vertex. Assuming the identity of the double-Regge couplings in the exclusive and inclusive cases, we discuss the problem of isolating this mechanism experimentally. We propose experimental tests for the identity of the couplings. We discuss the origin of the problems associated with observing the Al meson in the exclusive reaction, and discuss mechanisms by which it might be seen in the inclusive case.U of I OnlyThesi

Assessment in the Time of Covid

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