Law, Social Movements, and the Political Economy of Domestic Violence

This article uses the occasion of the 2013 Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to review the circumstances by which legal theory and social movement discourse have circumscribed the scope of VAWA and the dominant approach to domestic violence. This article seeks to explore the relationship between domestic violence advocacy and feminist theory, which has functioned as “the ideological reflection of one’s own place in society” with insufficient attention to superstructures. Additionally, it argues for a reexamination of the current domestic violence/criminal justice paradigm and calls for the consideration of economic uncertainty and inequality as a context for gender-based violence. As an epistemology, domestic violence scholarship has fallen behind other fields of study due to its failure to address the structural context of gender-based violence. This article proposes a redefinition of the parameters of domestic violence law and presents new (and provocative) ways to think about law-related interventions to ameliorate gender violence

In Pursuit of Economic Justice: The Political Economy of Domestic Violence Law and Policies

Intimate partner violence (“IPV”) is often exercised as an act of coercion by abusers who engage in strategies to interfere with their partners’ ability to engage productively in the workplace and deny them control over economic resources, that is, to deny them agency. Certainly, awareness of the insidious facets of economic coercion of IPV has expanded in recent years. However, attention to the efficacy of legal and policy responses to the economic consequences of such abuse has not received commensurate attention. Federal and state laws designed to address economic abuse are applied haphazardly if at all. The laws themselves, moreover, are ill-suited to address the structural issues that contribute to domestic violence in the first place. Similarly, “economic justice initiatives” promoted by anti-violence advocates to “respond to, address, and prevent financial abuse” related to domestic violence fall far short of their intended goals. These programs ignore the overarching neoliberal underpinnings of the political economy that burden victims with the costs of their own remediation through practices designed to benefit financial markets. The recent attention to remediating domestic violence, including economic abuse, illustrates the need to introduce analyses of political economy into law practices and advocacy strategies. This Article provides such analysis and considers how market forces constrain and shape legal remedies and advocacy strategies that address economic abuse. It argues that, without an understanding of the political economy, programmatic “advances” may, in fact, exacerbate the economic circumstances of victims as well as abusers

Social Justice as Desistance: Rethinking Approaches to Gender Violence

Part I of this Article describes most domestic violence intervention programs (DVIPs) as they currently function with regard to gender violence. It critiques the structure of these programs, their close partnership with criminal legal system actors, perceived deficiencies, and it identifies missed opportunities to provide meaningful intervention strategies with those who have harmed. It demonstrates the ways that laws, regulations, and policies governing DVIPs constrain most programs from moving beyond established practices informed by punitive approaches to address the structural conditions that situate gender violence within a political economic framework. Part II begins with a brief overview of the research on determinants of criminal behavior as applied to gender violence. It then examines the literature on desistance theory that demonstrates the benefits of social bonds in reducing criminal behavior. It posits that DVIPs can implement desistance theories by reconstituting program structures to promote social bonds for offenders through partnerships with social justice movements. These partnerships may help to address the determinants of transgressive behavior and promote political and social identities committed to social good. Part III moves the analytical framework discussed in Part II into the realm of praxis. It offers several proposals for restructuring DVIPs to facilitate desistance through social justice partnerships. It advocates for DVIPs to disengage with the criminal legal system and tum to social justice collaborators through approaches informed by restorative and transformat:ive justice principles. Partnerships with social justice movements provide the opportunity for offenders to engage in collaborative efforts with groups that address the causes of gender violence and promise to provide mutual benefits between anti.domestic violence work and other forms of social justice advocacy. Part III argues that DVIP-social justice partnerships promise meaningful legal reforms to the benefit of IPV survivors and offenders and the organizations with which they collaborate. These legal reforms address the programs\u27 structural weaknesses, strengthen resources for survivors and offenders, and resituate DVIPs in the realm of progressive social justice efforts