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This paper reports on
the results of research undertaken for the two-part Dispatches
Channel 4 documentary, Men Behaving Badly, shown in April 1998 which
investigated to what extent domestic violence is being treated as a
crime. A detailed questionnaire was distributed to police Domestic
Violence Units, solicitors’ offices, Women’s Aid and other women’s
organisations and through personal contacts all over England, Scotland
and Wales. 400 women participated: 150 were women who had not reported
the violence to the police, 150 from women who had reported but had not
gone to court, and 100 from women who had gone to court. Twenty of
these, some of whom appeared on the documentary, were interviewed in
depth.
Secondly, we asked the
domestic violence unit (DVU) at a London police station to analyse all
cases between January and July 1997 to find out what action, if any, had
been taken, by the police, the CPS and the courts. Thirdly, we gained
the co-operation of the police to undertake a small sentencing study to
investigate whether domestic violence was being treated differently from
other forms of crime (i.e. non domestic offences). Seven police
authorities compare the first 10 cases of domestic assaults with the
first 10 cases of non domestic assaults coming before the courts in
1998. The implications of the findings are discussed and a model of
restorative justice proposed.
At the 1997 Labour Party
Conference, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw announced his intention ‘to
give greater priority to tackling the crime - for that is what it is -
of domestic violence - I want zero tolerance of domestic violence’.
This was followed in June 1998 by the publication of a report on the
Inter-departmental Committee set up to consider vulnerable witnesses, Speaking
up for Justice, which presents a number of recommendations aimed at
reforming the law on rape and domestic violence. In July 1999 the
Women’s Unit, which had been set up by the Labour Government and
transferred to the Cabinet Office in 1998, published its report ‘Living
Without Fear’, the first official document to address the problem
of domestic violence and propose various forms of action to address it.
At the same time as
these announcements were made, there is growing evidence that the
criminal justice system is in crisis. Violent crime has steadily risen
since the 1950s while police clear up rates and conviction rates for
most types of crime are falling (Rose 1996). Rape and domestic violence
are no exception: indeed they are the leading examples of this trend.
The conviction rate for rape has deteriorated sharply over the past
decade. The number of reported rapes trebled but the number found guilty
in 1994 (425) was lower than in 1985 (450) (Home Office Statistics). For
domestic violence (defined as violence against wives and cohabitees, ex
wives and ex cohabitees and ex lovers) the conviction rate of reported
cases, as we shall see, is even lower, where domestic violence accounts
for 25 per cent of recorded crime in Britain (see Labour Party
Consultative Group1995, Stanko et al 1997). Yet as Snider (1998:2) has
pointed out ‘decades of social science research, empirical and
theoretical, critical and conservative, document the failure of criminal
justice systems to improve the safety, life conditions or life-chances
of victims, or to transform offenders’.
Main
Findings
In the
survey women
reported that the violence they had suffered
was systematic, deliberate, and at the extreme, life threatening.
So what led up to the violence? There is a common assumption
about men who hit their wives. They must have been provoked by her
unreasonable behaviour. The respondents on the other hand reported that
any annoyance could lead to a beating:
A
really silly example that led into a beating was because I’d made
sausage casserole and I hadn’t put dumplings in it. He wanted
dumplings. And I ended up wearing the sausage casserole as it came out
of the oven.
Making
a cup of tea and putting maybe half a sugar too much in
I
cooked too many potatoes for dinner
If his dinner
wasn’t ready on time.
If
there wasn’t enough butter on his toast.
Tins
in the cupboard all had to be like perfect.. If there was one tin just
not turned facing frontwards, the whole lot would come out.
I
used to sit there after thinking if I’d played it a different way, if
when he’d come in I’d have run to the front door I’d have opened
the door quicker.
Or
if the kettle had been made for him. If his bath hadn’t been the right
temperature.
Whatever
way I went I couldn’t win. I knew that I was going to get it. Really I
should have just stood there and hit myself. It would have been easier.
One woman explained how the control that the abuser held gradually
increased until :
You spend your
whole time desperately trying to keep them happy. ‘What would you like
for dinner darling? Which shirt would you like to wear tomorrow darling?
No of course I won’t do that darling. Yes of course I’ll do that for
you darling. Cos you know if you don’t you’ll get hit. It’s awful.
It’s anything to keep the peace. Until every little thing you do is
for them. You end up doing nothing at all for yourself. You’re just
walking on eggshells the whole time. Trying to keep them happy. Trying
not to give them an ‘excuse’ to be violent. Though of course, they
don’t really need an excuse. If you’ve ironing their jeans the
‘wrong’ way, they’ll hit you.
Women
all complained of the way the assailants had restricted their activity.
At first the attention that the women received had been flattering.
Women wanted to make clear that the men nevertheless appeared to be
quite normal. Tanya who almost died from the violence explained how her
ex husband was initially ‘charming, he had a good sense of humour. I
just expected it to be a happy
relationship because I’d never experienced violence before.
In retrospect Tanya saw
that her husband was over attentive from the beginning – meeting her
for lunch, from work, rarely letting her out of his sight. ‘I can see
clearly now, but at the time, I wanted someone to love and someone who
loved me. And my daughters were delighted to have a new loving daddy.
Barely a year into their marriage ‘he would unplug the phone, lock the
doors, send the children out and I knew I would be a punch bag.
Sometimes I would hit myself, saying ‘Here, I’ll do it for you’. I
had become nothing. It was five years before she finally left and went
into hiding. Her eldest daughter suffered terrible nightmares and tried
to commit suicide by leaping from the bedroom window. Two years on they
are coming our of therapy.
Many
others had assumed that their new boyfriend was very much in love with
them, and were horrified when the attention turned into unreasonable
jealousy and increasing control, leading to their isolation from friends
and family. These are some of their reports:
He
cut me off from my parents – I couldn’t see my parents.
I
wasn’t allowed to talk to my parents – I couldn’t see my parents.
I
wasn’t allowed to talk to my family. I wasn’t allowed to talk to my
friends.
Even
talking to my neighbour across the garden was wrong.
I
wasn’t allowed out of his sight.
Two
thirds had rarely been allowed out on their own and their partner was
always checking up on them. Over half has not been allowed to see friends or family and a third had not been
allowed to speak to anyone. Almost all of them had been persuaded to give up work
whatever their job as one woman explained:
He
made me give up my job as a caseworker with disabled children. He made
me be with him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I wasn’t allowed to
answer the phone. I wasn’t allowed to open letter. I wasn’t allowed
to have a bath by myself. He wanted to control everything I said and
did.
Some
were timed when they went to shop
and were beaten if delayed. They were not allowed to make phone
calls – and several men took away the phone if they went out. Some
women were not allowed out of the man’s sight, one was only
allowed to go to the bathroom twice a day when he said she could
go. Their letters were opened and their telephone calls were
intercepted.
We
found that violence was systematic, deliberate, and life threatening. The
injuries suffered included: pushed,
slapped, kicked in face, head (30 per cent), hit with weapon (14 per
cent ), woman had been choked or strangled
(56 per cent), burnt with cigarettes (17 per cent), suffered
stroke and one lost movement in left side following a stroke. One man
threw a tin of emulsion over his wife’s head and dragged into an ice
cold shower. She suffered broken blood vessels in her head, another
developed alopaecia where your hair falls out. Women suffered broken ribs,
fractured cheek bones, perforated eardrums, broken noses, black eyes,
bruising, broken teeth; One was assaulted with base ball bat and thrown
down stairs, and another was threatened with an air and hand gun. 51 per
cent were raped or forced to have sex against their will and 24 per cent
were forced to perform other sexual acts. This is the testimony of women
who had suffered extreme violence:
He got me by the throat,
both hands strangling me. His thumbs were actually pushing into my
windpipe.
It was in the bath and
on the mirror. My clothes were soaked in blood, all over my hair,
dripping all over.
He said this is the
chainsaw. He said I’m coming to get you with the chainsaw.
I was tied to a chair,
sometimes I’d be gagged so I couldn’t scream for help. If I hadn’t
been through it , I wouldn’t believe it.
Pregnancy
Several women reported
that the violence had escalated during pregnancy. One woman reported
losing a baby.
He punched me and hit me and he caught me in the
stomach. And I sat on the floor and I was crying , the pain. I went to the doctor and he couldn’t find a heart beat. My
baby had died. And it was twins and one of them had died.
Domestic abuse often
starts or escalates in pregnancy. Relatively few women die during
pregnancy or childbirth, but pregnant women are more likely to suffer
domestic violence at the hands of their partner and are more likely to
commit suicide. A 1998 Confidential Enquiry into Maternity Deaths, which
reports every three years, looked at public health matters that endanger
women’s lives. The inquiry looked at 375 deaths of which 268 were
considered to be related to medical problems in the pregnancy or within
six weeks of giving birth. The inquiry found that six women in the past
three years died as a result of domestic violence and thousands were
injured. They drew on studies which showed that in about a third of
cases the violence started in pregnancy.
So what happens when women call
the police?
Ellie was typical. She
dialled 999 and the police arrived as her husband was punching and
kicking her. They arrested him but released him in the early hours.
‘He came in and started punching and hitting me for telling the
police’. Even when he smashed down the door and attacked her with a
knife, he was merely fined £300.
Police policy
initiatives on domestic violence have only been in place nationally
since 1990 in the UK (see Cromack 1995: 88, Gregory & Lees 1999)
despite studies drawing attention to the shortcomings of criminal
justice intervention (see Edwards 1996). In August 1990 the Home
Secretary announced that a higher priority would in future be given to
domestic violence and that it would no longer be dismissed as not worthy
of police time (Wolmar 1990). National guidelines were issued by the
Home Office (circular 60/1990) recommending that all police officers
should ‘regard as their over-riding priority the protection of the
victim and the apprehension of the offender’. The circular urged
police forces to keep accurate records, enforce the criminal law and
offer sympathetic treatment and support to victims. In the wake of these
guidelines, specialised domestic violence units were established in some
areas, enabling non-uniformed officers to follow up cases and
co-ordinate services.
The police argue that
there is often insufficient evidence to make an arrest. Women, on the
other hand, reported that the police do not always understand the
violence they are experiencing. They are often literally hostages in
their own homes. As Maria reported: ‘He went round and locked all the
windows and all the doors to make sure that I couldn’t leave. Some
injuries, such as strangulation marks on the neck, for example, may not
appear to be serious and may take some time to become visible.
Strangulation is the most common method used by men to kill their
wives of partners ( Home Office Statistics Research Department 1998).
Other injuries are not
visible without examination. One respondent told the police she had a
lumps on her head where her husband had head butted her.
She explained ‘When the police came I was a mess. I couldn’t
stop crying and they turned round and said because there’s no physical
markings on my body and there was only him and me, they couldn’t do
anything at all. And he could see the lumps in my head cos it was right
up here but they wouldn’t take him,
they would not do anything’. She wanted her partner arrested, but the
police had said ‘Sorry love, we can’t arrest him. There are no marks
on you’.
A duty police officer
told another woman, who had staggered into the police station after
being held hostage by her husband for several weeks, that her extensive
injuries could not be used as evidence as they had not been inflicted in
the previous 24 hours. The fact that she had only managed to escape with
her life was ignored. She described what happened @There were bruises
all over my arms. I had black eyes. And I had some knife wounds and a
gash on the side of my head. All of which were visible. And I said to
the police officer behind the desk ‘Can you please help me? I’ve
just run from an abusive marriage. And he said to me ‘If he hasn’t
hit you within 24 hours, then there’s absolutely nothing that we can
do’.
The police often fail to
appreciate that by the time they are called, the violence may well have
gone on for months, or in some cases years. In a third of cases women
said they had been beaten up over 30 times before they called the
police. Half the women had been beaten up over ten times, (21 per cent
between five and ten times and only 29 per cent less than five times.
When women did call for help, many failed to press charges. In a quarter
of cases the women had been threatened with death if they took the case
through the courts.
30 per cent of those who
were not arrested had been reported to DVU during previous 12 months. Of
those arrested, 62 were not charged by the police. The most cited reason
for not taking action was that the victim was not willing to give a
statement (32 per cent) at the scene that women so often withdraw their
allegation (6.5 per cent). Another third (34 per cent) were dropped as
there was insufficient evidence. The remainder were given a caution or,
in four cases, the statement was withdrawn by the victim. The police and
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have the power to force a woman to give
evidence, but argue that they are reluctant
to do so on the grounds that it may put women at greater risk.
Compellability needs to be used sensitively, but some women in our
survey certainly wanted the decision to go to court taken out of their
hands. As Jayne, one of the
women interviewed explained ‘ I think the police give up too easily.
The reason women fail to co-operate is not that women do not want action
taken due to fear of
reprisals if they do’. The police, on the other hand, argue that the
failure to proceed is due to women ‘loving too much’ and being
ambivalent about taking action against the perpetrators of violence.
These may well determine why women do not report, but are unlikely to be
the main reasons for not proceeding after they have resorted to calling
the police.
The police do not
appear to take into consideration that women are terrified of
retribution from their abusers and are still given little protection
against them. By far the most common reason given by women for not
reporting was ‘he threatened to kill me’ (74 per cent) or ‘he said
he would hurt me badly and get others to hurt me too’, ‘he always
said to me that I would never have a divorce. This marriage would end by
me in a wooden box’, ‘he always told me that if I ever called the
police I wouldn’t be around to see another day’. Almost half said
they were threatened with a
weapon (45 per cent). One
man threatened to fire bomb the house, to shoot her, to commit suicide
if she left him (43 per cent), to harm the kids (33 per cent), never to
let her see friends and family again. One man told
his eleven year old daughter that he would cut her mum’s
throat. Another man said he would kill her cats and burn the house down.
Another said he would ‘take me to a field and beat me until I was dead
and leave me there’. He put a Stanley knife to my throat and said: You
either come back now or I’m going to slit your throat
Others cited other
pressures: Child asked her ‘not to send Daddy to prison’, former
partner offered to give her half the house if she withdrew charges,
woman said she ‘pursued many prosecutions in the past but nothing had
happened in the way of punishment so no point’. Compellability needs
to be used sensitively, but some women in our survey certainly wanted
the decision to go to court taken out of their hands. As one of the women interviewed put
it ‘I think the police give up too easily. The reason women fail to
co-operate is not that women do not want action taken, but due to fear
of reprisals if they do’.
Most of the women
suffered years of escalating violence because they were paralysed by
fear and had become isolated from family and friends. Nearly half were
kept prisoner in their own homes, with windows and doors locked. Some
were left tied to beds or chairs.
Court intervention
Injunctions failed to
give women protection. One
of the main problems is that even when abusers persistently break
injunctions, judges do not often send them to prison. Several women
explained what happened to them:
Injunctions are
rubbish. I had two. They weren’t worth the paper they were written on.
And they cost me £3,000. The first time didn’t even have power of
arrest, and I said to my solicitor ‘This isn’t going to stop him!
And it didn’t. He came round and beat me up again. So I went to court
and got another injunction with power of arrest. That didn’t stop him
either. He came round and hit me. I called the police up and said:
‘He’s here now sitting in the kitchen. Come and arrest him. By the
time the police came round, he’d gone and the police said: We can’t
arrest him. It’s just your word against his. I said ‘What’s the
bloody point in having an injunction! He’d hit me, and he always hits
me around the head where it’s difficult to bruise’.
‘Sorry
love’ they said. ‘There’s nothing we can do. And we can’t do him
for criminal damage as it’s just your word against him that he did it!
I could not
believe it. All the way I’ve had to push push push to make things
happen. I got a solicitor and he complained to the police. I complained
too. I went to see the Chief Constable to let him know how completely
ineffectual his officers were. After my solicitor complained, the police
finally arrested him four days after the assault. They charged him with
common assault and for an incident 6 weeks beforehand when he put me in
hospital. It was my saving grace that I’d told the hospital he’d
beaten me up. I don’t think the case would ever have got to court
otherwise. That time he’d given me a fractured cheek bone, a black
eye, and cut my eyebrow. I’ve still got a scar. So luckily there were
hospital records of my injuries. He’d beaten me up really badly but
the charge was still only common assault. I had to give evidence in
court and his defence solicitor ripped me to streads. She kept saying
that I had inflicted the injuries – that I’d banged my head against
the wall. He got 80 hours
community service and a £120 fine. It was pathetic. I’d had two and a
half years constant violence from that man. I had hospital records for
both the common assaults and he gets a slap on the wrist. The charges
were ridiculous.
Another described how she too had had to move.
I
had to move away. In the end, the police came round and told me, ‘We
can’t protect you from him. It’s impossible. You’re going to have
to move away’. We all knew he’s kill me if I’d stayed. The police
go home at the end of the day but you’re still there. And he can turn
up at anytime of the day or night and beat you. They can’t protect you
can’t go to family or friends, he just victimises them. I left my job,
my friends, my family, everything. I’ve had to lie to everyone.
Women in the survey were
critical of the way the police and the CPS dealt with their complaints
on several grounds. Firstly, evidence of their injuries was often not
documented. Secondly, the victim’s fear of retaliation was not taken
seriously. Complainants
reported being asked to make statements in front of their assailants
when terrified of retaliation. Fear was the main reason women gave for
not reporting assaults. 70 per cent of unreported cases victims were
afraid they would be hurt as a result. It was for this reason that women
refused to give evidence when they had reported the case. They were
terrified that the abuser’s violence would escalate. In several cases
where men were arrested, this was exactly what happened. They returned
to punish women for reporting the violence.
Many women had been subjected to years of intimidation and
stalking, as these women recounted:
Then they read
our what he’d done before. He had a previous conviction for assaulting
a girlfriend. And he gets a fine. So much for protecting women. He
doesn’t know where I am now. I’ve had to leave the area. I’ve had
to leave my home, my friends, family, everything. Straight after he got
arrested, I had to leave my job. He was making it impossible. Every day
I’d come out of work and he’d be there to harass me. He carried on
hitting me. I was petrified. He was one of those men who just wouldn’t
leave me alone.
I
have moved because he said he would hurt me badly and get others to hurt
me too. I moved to a refuge but violence continued. I called the police
seven times. He caught me checking for my mail at my house and
took me by the
throat. I previously dropped charges because he threatened by brother
who is now serving a sentence for attempted murder. He punished me with
more violence for taking him to court.
A
quarter of the women had never called the police and the majority of
those said this was because they were far too terrified of what their
husbands would do.
He’d just wait for that knock and once he
heard that knock on the door, I’d be dead before the police got
through it.
He said that if a police car, just one police
car is to pull in that forecourt, he wasn’t going to ask any
questions. He was just going to throw me straight out of the window.
Jayne called the police who arrested him as he was still punching and
hitting her. After taking him away, she really thought the police would
come back and talk to her about what had been happening. However no-one
came and her husband was only arrested for breach of the police which is
not a criminal offence. There is no investigation and the man is not
charged with anything else. It usually means a night in the cells to
cool off and possibly a court appearance to promise not to cause any
further trouble. Jayne’s husband was simply released early the
following morning. She explained what happened:
And the next thing
was I woke with a start – and he was standing there. He just started
punching me and hitting me for telling the police. After that I didn’t
ring the police again, not for a long time because I got a worse beating
for it because I’d involved them. They didn’t help me in any way.
The Effect on Children
In the 1990s the
harmful effects of witnessing domestic violence on children has
increasingly been recognised and the links between child abuse and abuse
of women documented ( Mullender & Morley 1995, Anderson 1997, Hester
& Pearson 1998). The
setting up and expansion of ChildLine, a helpline which children can
ring anonymously, has revealed the widespread incidence of such abuse.
An analysis of calls made to ChildLine (Epstein & Keep 1995)
indicated how children describe feeling responsible both for causing the
violence and for preventing it and this in turn engenders an
overwhelming sense of helplessness. Over a third of the sample had been
physically abused.
In our research a very
high percentage (89 per cent) had children of whom women reported 76 per
cent had been threatened with violence.
He pushed the ironing
board out of the way. He pushed me on the floor and he kicked me in the
wrist and I actually heard my wrist break. The pain was unbelievable. He
said to my daughter. He took her to the side and he said ‘Mummy’s
been naughty – that’ what happens to naughty people’.
The 1990s have seen
considerable public policy and professional concern about domestic
violence as the consequences for mothers and children have gradually
begun to be recognised. It is ironic that some women say they stay in
violent marriage for the sake of the children. However witnessing
violence has been shown to be almost as damaging as experiencing
violence directly.,
In 1998 the Department
of Health commissioned the development of the
Reader ‘Making an Impact’ and a Training Resource pack to
increase awareness about the impact on children of domestic violence and
to develop professional understanding of how best to offer help and
support. The materials were devised by Barnardo’s, the NSPCC, and the
Domestic Violence Research Group of the University of Bristol with the
assistance of a multi-disciplinary team. there is some evidence that
social work responses still often adhere to pathologising or
family systems models. The main reason is that women in violent
relationships are seen as ‘clients in need of therapy, rather than
people in need of alternatives and choices’ ( Dobash & Dobash
1992: 234).
In 1997 Women’s Aid
carried out a survey of refuges to investigate the impact of child
contact arrangements. 54 refuges took part, and 67 per cent reported
that women had been abused when they were handing over children for
contact visits and 31 per cent reported that children had been
physically or sexually abused during contact. Eight refuges stated that
contact orders gave the address of the refuge, endangering the safety of
all women and children staying there and 23 refuges stated that a child
had been forced to reveal the address of the refuge during contact
visits.
There
is also evidence that children’s lives can be at risk after the break
up of a relationship. On August 4, 1998, for example,
three children were found dead in a smouldering Ford Capri,
killed by their father because he feared his wife had walked out on him.
The father hung himself. Police identified the 3 children as Lucy aged
7, Thomas, aged 4 and Hollie, 3 (Guardian August 4, 1998). On March 20,
1999 Peter Hall was sentenced for stabbing his girl friend, Celeste
Bates, aged 31 and killing her two children. He first murdered her
before collecting her 17 month old son, Milo, from his nursery and
taking him to her home, where he killed him with a pickaxe handle. He
then collected 8 year old Daniel from his childminder and killed him the
same way. After the killings he went to a pub and told drinkers: ’I am
going to be famous’. Sentencing Hall at Manchester Crown Court, Mr
Justice Forbes said ‘None of your victims had done you the slightest
harm… Together they formed a decent, happy, loving family unit.. which
fell victim to your jealous rage’(Guardian March 20, 1999).
These two tragic cases
illustrate the danger that women and children fleeing from abusive
fathers face. The effect of recent
legislation awarding fathers more rights of access to children has put
women fleeing violence more at risk.
Men can apply for contact orders under the Children Act 1989 and
use court procedures to track down their victims. Hester & Radford
(1996) reviewed developments regarding contact between children and
parents after separation and divorce. They outline the tactics used by
men in custody cases such as using children as hostages to force women
to return, manipulation of legal procedures relating to child care in
attempt to involve courts and law to continue the harassment. They point
out that the concept of ‘parental
responsibility’ by which men are encouraged to have more contact with
their children does not
take into consideration the harassment women and children suffer. Their
research indicates that violence from men to female partners and the
impact of such violence on children is not being taken into account in
judicial settlements of child contact post separation.
Women
are still suffering violence due to such
terrorist tactics of men. Some are literally hostages in their
own home. They may have one or two opportunities to call the police.
What the survey tells us is that women usually only call the police as a
last resort. So when women do report to the police it is vital that the
police treat the calls very seriously indeed and investigate thoroughly.
If they do not they could be leaving women in extreme danger. The survey
shows that women are unanimously happy with DVUs, but some forces do not
have them and others only one or two. The results of the failure to
protect women means that they are forced for their own protection to
take the men back. As Sylvia explained:
We
found that the lack of investigation following reports of assaults was a
major shortcoming of the police response. Whereas in the event of a
reported burglary, an investigation proceeds, in the event of a domestic
assault, even where repeat victimisation is evident, follow up rarely
takes place. If domestic violence is to be treated seriously, then
resources need to be made available to enable cases to be properly
investigated and followed up, as is the case with property crimes.
The
homicide figures show that strangulation is the most common way
husbands kill their wives. Attempted strangulation should be
charged as attempted murder. In most cases it is preceded by threats to
kill and if it was charged as attempted murder then these very dangerous
men would be put behind bars and many women’s lives would be saved.
Implications from our surveys clear- that priority should
be given to women’s safety. Over half the women surveyed did not think
the police took domestic violence seriously or seriously enough. There
should be a mandatory arrest policy and it should not be left up to the
women to decide. We do not ask hostages if they want to be released when
their captors are present.
The
majority of women want the police to arrest or remove perpetrators. The
Home Office Affairs Committee (1993) Third Report DV Vol 1 HMSO
stated that ‘ We should like to see arrest being as normal a
response to domestic violence as to other offences’.
The police do have extensive powers of arrest
and can arrest a suspect if they want. Almost without exception
every domestic violence incident would allow the police to arrest either
on suspicion of having committed a crime or to prevent a breach of the
peace. Regarding sentencing at present the vast majority get off scot
free. Anger reduction courses should be mandatory and probation used in
first instance. Where partners have broken up or violence serious
mandatory imprisonment.
Domestic
Violence Units
Domestic Violence Units (DVUs) were set up in most police authorities in the early 1990s in order
to give some support to women suffering domestic violence. They have no
investigatory powers and do not take the decision whether to charge or
arrest which is left to uniformed officers.
In the DVU study of reported incidents of domestic assault at the
London police station, out of 512 cases only I in 5 cases led to
arrests. Yet only 6.5 per cent were charged. We also checked with 50
police forces and found that their arrest rates were similar or even
lower. Yet two thirds of the women in our survey said that they wanted
the police to arrest or remove the perpetrator. Over half the women
surveyed did not think the police took domestic violence seriously or
seriously enough. 1 in 5 said they would not call the police again. Of
the 512 incidents reported a mere 19 (3 per cent) of the original cases
reached court and, of these, only 13 resulted in a conviction. In only
two cases were the men sent to prison, one of whom was sentenced to
three months although he had had thirteen previous court appearances for
assault. Typical sentences were fines, community service orders and
conditional discharges.
These
results are mirrored by Cretney and Davis (1996, 1997) who carried out
an extensive study of the police and CPS handling of domestic violence
cases in Avon and Somerset focusing particularly on the way the police,
CPS and courts ‘manage’ the reluctant victim and on the
compellability provision whereby a wife can now be compelled to give
evidence against her husband (see Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984,
Section 80). They followed up over 400 cases of domestic assault heard
in magistrates and Crown Courts in Bristol of which only 10 per cent
came to trial. They argued that the disinclination of many domestic
violence victims to give evidence against their assailants may be
understood as a reflection
of courts' inadequate trivialising response to the harm suffered.
Complainants were very dissatisfied with the system, where charges were
routinely reduced where they considered
sentences were too low.
Cretney
and Davis presented a number of criticisms of the adversarial system
pointing out that defence lawyers used a variety of tactics to undermine
the prosecution’s case, such as painting a picture of restored
domestic harmony, or suggesting that the accusation is made by a woman
scorned or by a jealous or alcoholic woman. They often played down the
violence. Mild language was used when referring to the degree of
disharmony between the woman and her assailant and strong language when
referring to the character of the complainant.
They pointed to the shortcomings of the adversarial process,
whereby only the bare outline of the incident is presented in court even
though it represents the culmination of years of violence. They analysed
why sentences were so low for offences involving such serious levels of
violence and concluded that what crucially determined sentence length
was not the gravity of the offence, but whether or not the defendant was
still seen as part of ‘the couple’. Where the relationship had
ended, offenders were much more likely to go to prison; where it was
said that the two were still a ‘couple’, the offender would receive
a fine or a conditional discharge. Some magistrates defended lenient
sentences on the grounds that they did not want to punish the victim as
well as the offender. However, such practices acted as an incentive for
the defence to present the court with a misleading picture of domestic
harmony and resulted in high levels of dissatisfaction among
complainants. Many of the women interviewed had hoped that their
assailant would receive some kind of treatment to help him control his
violent behaviour. Most assault victims concluded that the court was not
a place where their problems could be satisfactorily addressed.
Hoyle’s
(1998) study, based both on interviews and participant observation,
takes a very different stance. She aimed to discover what factors shaped
the Thames Valley police and CPS response to domestic violence in the
light of the Home Office circular introduced in 1990 which recommended
arrest in such cases, but failed to make much impact. She investigated
how officers attending domestic disputes defined the situation and
negotiated solutions and why police failed to enforce the circular by
arresting the assailant in the event of an assault.
In
line with previous such studies, she found that police attributed this
mainly to the frequency with which victims withdrew their statements,
and to police and prosecutors’ perceptions of the effectiveness and
appropriateness of the criminal justice system. She appears to take
women’s ‘preferences’ about how to deal with violent partners
largely at face value and argues that the police and criminal justice
system are mainly fulfilling their wishes. She considers that previous
studies have underestimated the role of victims in these decisions and
have assumed that the police and prosecutors rarely wish to prosecute
such cases. She is critical
of the idea of mandatory arrest which she thinks would fly in the face
of what most women want, and although she makes a distinction between
arrest and prosecution, the distinction often get lost.
From
the beginning Hoyle distances herself from feminist criminologists
arguing that they have not taken sufficiently into account the
reluctance of women to pursue cases to prosecution and have blamed
police culture rather than what she regards as ‘police sensitivity to
women’s preferences’. In her view the original aims of the women’s
movement have receded and been replaced by criticism of the criminal
justice system which has a adopted ‘right wing’ calls for greater
criminalisation. She fails to take into consideration the distinction
between arrest and prosecution and to understand that mandatory arrest
need not lead to greater criminalisation. She overlooks pressures on
witnesses to drop cases: that,
for example, the Crown
Prosecution Service does nothing to encourage victim witnesses and often
starts from the presumption that women will withdraw which then becomes
a self fulfilling prophesy. Her view that the direction of the women’s
movement has changed is simplistic. It overlooks the dramatic success of
Women’s Aid refuges and services, of Zero Tolerance campaigns
throughout the country, and of all kinds of community programmes from
courses to encourage men to take responsibility for their violence to
the setting up of multi agency forums.
Sentencing
The
Dispatches sentencing survey in the seven police authorities involved
comparing 80 cases of domestic and non-domestic assault
reported in January and February 1998. Even when equivalent
violence was used, domestic cases were more likely to be charged as
common assault than actual or grievous bodily harm. Where the more
serious charge was brought, it was for more likely to be downgraded.
This happened in 53 per cent of domestic cases compared with 14 per cent
of non-domestic. The findings clearly indicated that domestic violence
cases were more likely to be downgraded to less serious charges by the
CPS and were treated less seriously by the police and the courts.
Domestics more than twice as likely to be downgraded to lesser charge
than non domestics. 1 in 3 cases were downgraded from ABH (actual bodily
harm) to common assault by CPS whereas only
7 per cent of non domestics were. Almost half (46 per cent) were
charged with common assault. Only
a quarter ( 25 per cent) with ABH
- all those from West Yorkshire where there has been a special campaign
to take domestic violence more seriously. Of non domestics only 1 in 3
were charged with common assault and 44% with ABH. Imprisonment was
very rare - in one case after 13 court appearances ( 3 months
only) or where a baby was injured, or where weapon involved. Sentences
were derisory - Out of 30 cases only four were given probation and
two imprisonment. I in 3 discontinued or bound over. Otherwise cases
were given community service orders, conditional discharge or fine.
To
understand how it is that criminal justice fails to serve the victims of
domestic violence it is necessary to consider the dynamics of the
criminal justice process as it moves into action. For an action to be
dealt with as crime it is reasonably clear that the agencies of criminal
justice (police, prosecutors, judiciary) must, whatever the criminal law
says, actually take the activity seriously as a crime. This by no means
always the case. Firstly, individual members of the criminal justice
system may engage in such activities themselves. Domestic violence is a
classic case. The 1982 Metropolitan Police Working Party Report on
domestic violence argued that one reason why male police were reluctant
to act in such cases was that they were heavy drinkers and likely to
engage in domestic violence themselves. While few police officers,
judges or barristers engage in burglary – at least on a regular basis
- the same cannot be said of domestic violence.
Secondly,
criminal justice agencies may see themselves as having other priorities
which might conflict with prosecution. Crucial in the case of domestic
violence is the understood ‘need’ to protect the family. The fear
that too strong a prosecution policy might break up families – one of
the key institutions of civilised society acts as a powerful antidote.
This became clear in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the
Victorian concern with the family as a key institution of social
stability and moral socialisation developed. For example, the historian
James Hammerton commenting on the statistical decline in recorded
domestic violence during the latter part of the nineteenth century,
emphasises the distinction between any real decline in marital violence
and a reduction in the number of effectively criminalised incidents.
“…
for the simple reason that during the period of statistical decline (the
magistrates courts) increasingly became courts of conciliation as well
as summary conviction. With the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878, which
provided for separation and maintenance allowances for wives of husbands
convicted of aggravated assaults, local magistrates courts increasingly
took on a more paternalistic role, eager to intervene in an attempt to
make the wife forgive, the husband reform and the family reunite, and
thus avoid the fragile division of slender economic resources.
Magistrates, together with a growing army of police court missionaries,
probation officers and clerks of the court came to see themselves as
marriage menders.” (1992: 39)
The
conviction that it was the duty of all concerned to preserve the
sanctity of the family was a set of beliefs that impeded the effective
criminalisation of domestic violence. It is a belief that continues into
the present period. During the mid 1970’s - a memorandum from the Association of Chief Police Officers to
the House of Commons Select Committee on Violence in Marriage explained
police reluctance to act in ‘domestic’ cases on the grounds that
“we are, after all, dealing with persons ‘bound in marriage’, and
it is important, for a host of reasons, to maintain the unity of the
spouses.” (quoted in Atkins and Hoggett 1984: 134). In Dobash and
Dobash’s (1979) investigation into the experience of battered wives,
women reported that social work and police agencies were more concerned
with keeping the family together, than promoting their safety. These
sentiments were echoed by Barbara Mills when she was head of the Crown
Prosecution Service (CPS). The guidelines for the prosecution service
include for all crimes a ‘public interest’ criteria as to whether to
prosecute a particular case. At a meeting in May 1998 she announced that
the definition of the public interest in domestic violence cases
includes ‘keeping the family together’. This, it might be thought is
a strange definition of ‘public’ which excludes the victims of
violence.
The
combined effect of these two factors is that domestic violence, taking
place within the sanctified relations of the family, may be subtly
redefined in the eyes of police, prosecutors, and judges as something
akin to a private civil dispute between two equal parties in which the
criminal justice system has no real business intervening rather than as
the criminal action of offender on victim. Police do not see it as
‘real police work’ There is some evidence that they are happier
intervening if they are called not by the victim, but by a third party
– say a neighbour – in which case it can be seen as a breach of the
peace, which is, of course, a public offence and a matter for the
criminal justice authorities.
It
is clear that the criminal justice system is most at home in dealing
with relations between strangers – where no other identities such as
family roles can obstruct the process of criminalisation and the
definition of the relationship between the parties as those of offender
and victim ( see for example Temkin 1999) Where the relationship is
between people who have some intimate relationship then the labelling of
victim and offender becomes blurred and the notion of a private dispute
– in which the ‘victim’ may be equally, if not indeed more, to
blame than the ‘offender’, in which the victim, in rape or domestic
violence ‘brought it upon
herself’ – comes to predominate quite irrespective of what the
criminal law and the rules of criminal procedure say. Women who are
raped by strangers are still more likely to be more satisfied with their
treatment by the police (Lees 1997, Temkin 1999).
Community Intervention
Three
types of community interventions have
or could be developed involving the development of inter agency
co-ordination to promote the safety of women, programmes for
perpetrators and conferences for restorative justice ( see Hudson.
Concerning the first of these, in 1995 the Home Office issued an
Inter-Agency Circular (Home Office 1995) to stimulate the development of
co-ordinated inter-agency work at a local level. Hague et al (1996)
evaluated these schemes in order to provide policy and practice
guidelines and concluded that Domestic Violence Forums operated with
greater and lesser effectiveness in different areas. They found that
there was very patchy participation by some statutory agencies and no
guidelines on how the inter-agency policies should function. They
concluded that it was pointless to improve if the system being
co-ordinated was inadequate or inappropriate and pointed out that such
initiatives could merely act as a smokes-screen or as a talking shop
which disguises inaction and poor services. Adequate resourcing is
crucial, both for
inter-agency domestic violence work and for refuges and other
direct services if the approach is to be successful.
A
second development is work with violent men undertaken either in the
voluntary sector, or in partnership with the probation service or local
domestic violence fora. These initiatives developed out of the Domestic
Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) in Duluth,
Minnesota which embodied a co-ordinated response which combined
working for women’s safety and working with men to take responsibility
for their behaviour (see Pence & Paymar1988, Dobash et al 1996). The
overall aim of the Duluth model is to create intolerance of male
violence. The idea of challenging violence men to take responsibility
for their violence was developed in a community project based in Boston
called Emerge, and during the late1980s over 200 projects had been set
up ( Dobash & Dobash 1992).
A
similar project developed in the 1980s in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The
fundamental premise is that domestic violence is seen as a community rather than an individual
problem, which demands a co-ordinated community response. Such an
approach involves three integrated strategies: a mandatory arrest
policy, a domestic abuse
task force and court officials working in close co-ordination with the
woman’s shelter. The mandatory arrest policy, implemented in 1989,
means that the police are mandated to make an arrest in response to all
incidents of domestic violence where there is evidence that a crime may
have been committed. Police have to justify why they did not make an
arrest rather than vice versa. In Wisconsin I was told by the domestic
Intervention Task group that out of 18,000 incidents police were called
out to, roughly 9,000 resulted in an arrest. Training is integral to the
project and all police are thoroughly trained in the approach to
domestic violence and top up training workshops are held every year. Of
the 9,000 incidents, 90 per cent of cases are directed by the family
court to violence prevention programmes where men have to attend weekly
group sessions for 26 weeks for which they pay about 20 dollars a
session. These sessions are run by male and female co-therapists. If the
abuser fails to attend then he is immediately arrested and sent to
prison. Until the disposition of the case, which lasts anything up to
five days, men can be banned from contacting or visiting the home.
Additionally an abused wife can also apply for a court restraining order
which lasts up to two
years. Where repeat victimisation has occurred resources such as panic
buttons and support workers are also provided and where children are
involved, advocates attached to a Child Protection Team are put into
contact.
The
Home Office Islington pilot project Domestic Violence Matters, combined
two new elements: a pro-law enforcement stance by the police to domestic
violence with the provision of crisis intervention. It was drawn from a
two year pilot, the Family Consultant Service (FSC) introduced in
London, Ontario, Canada in 1972. It
involved locating a team of skilled civilian crisis interveners who
would be available seven days a week within the police service to
provide front line assistance to police intervention in ‘family
disputes’. Their role was to assess the situation, provide some
immediate crisis counselling, arrange for any necessary follow-up and
make referrals to other agencies. The consultants would be a bridge
between the police and other agencies in the community, both in terms of
active liaison and later through involvement in inter-agency forums. In
evaluating the project, Kelly et al (1997) points to the failure of the
criminal justice system as a whole to prioritise the safety of victims,
particularly by not using remand in custody or pursuing breaches of bail
vigorously enough. Kelly (1997)
points to the failure of the criminal justice system as a whole to
prioritise the safety of victims, particularly by not using remand in
custody or pursuing breaches of bail vigorously enough. She refers to
the approach adopted by the CPS, which does nothing to enable or
encourage victim witnesses; starting from the presumption that women
will withdraw, prosecutors act in such a way that in many cases this
becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. As an alternative approach, she
points to the experience of other jurisdictions, which have seen the
creation of trained prosecutors who specialise in domestic violence
cases. She adds that ‘in some jurisdictions this has been extended to
dedicated magistrates and judges and even the creation of domestic
violence courts’ (Kelly 1997: 49). She concludes:
There
has not been the movement in relation to law enforcement which the
project initially hoped for. Whilst some responsibility for that must
lie with the local criminal justice agencies, other factors were also at
play. The attitudinal barriers and routine trivialising of domestic
violence, which the police surveys documented, suffuses the police
service, despite policy changes, and was echoed in some of the attitudes
and practices of prosecutors, magistrates and judges
Mandatory
arrest has been criticised on
a number of grounds. As Dobash and Dobash (1992: 183-184) point out one
of the first documented effects of mandatory arrest legislation was an
increase in the number of women arrested for using violence to defend
themselves There is also the danger that it could be used as a way of
discriminating against black men. Additionally, some women do not always
want their husband or partner arrested and might be put off contacting
the police (Hoyle 1998). The Domestic Violence Task Force considered
that although this was sometimes the case, once the men had been
referred to violence intervention project, most women changed their
minds and were relieved that something was being done about the
violence.
These
initiatives raise the question of what is the best remedy for the
perpetrators of domestic violence and rape. Adding to the overcrowded
prison numbers – where they are likely, while out of sight and mind,
to rape again or be raped is no solution
Cowburn’s (1998) analysis of the influence of the dominant form of
masculinity in prisons on the culture of the male prison establishments
where sexism is rife, lends little confidence to the effectiveness of
violence prevention programmes in prison. As Howard Davidson (1986), a
Canadian prison abolitionist at a 1986 conference organised by
Dutch prison abolitionists, argued, since imprisonment fosters the forms
of domination which include violence against women, feminists should
look at community control alternatives rather than state control
approaches.
Given
that such programmes are likely to be more effective outside the harsh
environment of prisons, the core question is whether such programmes can
work in the community. Burton et al (1998) in their evaluation of such
schemes question what success means: does it mean that men change and,
if so, how and why do they change? Does the level and extent of the
change justify the expenditure or does it mean that the men are diverted
from other sanctions which the criminal justice system ought to be
applying? If physical
violence is the baseline, Edelson (1996) in his monitoring of
programmes, found
that they do stop some of the men who complete the programmes from
behaving physically violently at least in the short term. However there
remains the problem of a significant number dropping out before
completion.
The
need to address this problem is underlined by Burton et al’s (1998)
analysis of the records of 351 men who had been seen by the Violence
Prevention Project over two years. They found that 57 per cent of men
who were accepted onto the programme had failed to complete it - higher
than the 50 per cent found in projects
in the United States. Keeping men in programmes was connected
to three linked factors: recognition of their responsibility for
violence, motivation to change and sustainability. The researchers
conclude by arguing that the jury is still out as to whether such
schemes are effective in the long term. They point out that why
programmes are effective, and why some men change and others do not,
remain matters of debate and continued scrutiny (1998:1X), but they are
only likely to be effective if
as Burton et al (1998:34) emphasise ‘a clear and consistent message is
delivered that domestic violence is unacceptable, and that the courts
expect change’. They do not assess whether such programmes are more
effective than prison sentences, but there is an argument that more
humane interventions than prison are at least likely to be less damaging
(see Box Grainger 1986; Dobash & Dobash 1996).
Thirdly, a significant
development during the late 1980s and 1990s has been the elaboration of
the idea of restorative justice, as an alternative to retributive
justice.
The main principle is
that the task of the criminal justice system should be the restoration
of relationships and balances of advantages and disadvantages that have
been fractured by the harmful action. The strengths of restorative
justice are that it makes the perpetrator face the fact that real harm
has been done to an actual victim by his or her action; that the
perpetrator is a party to the outcome, that remorse more likely than
resentment at punishment, more likely than present system to balance the
needs of offenders and victims.
Abolitionists
recognise problems with people who pose a clear danger to others, who
refuse to offer redress or refrain from similar behaviour, to behaviour
where the perpetrator and victim are so opposed as to be non-negotiable,
and to the impact of restorative procedures on the acceptability of
behaviour in the community. Here prison is the only alternative..
Restorative Justice
A useful model is that
suggested by prison abolitionists of the ideal of restorative justice or
the setting up of ‘alternative dispute settlements’ (Braithwaite
& Daly 1994). The conference model allows the victim to have
representatives to urge her view of events, in which a feminist or
racial ethnic standpoint can be accommodated. The victim’s definition
of harm or threat is at the centre of proceedings. She is transformed
from the humiliated victim to an active claimant, identifying her own
requirement and drawing her own lines in future contacts with the
perpetrator.
Contemporary
restorative justice paradigms owe much to Braithwaite's idea of
reintegrative shaming. He contrasts the shaming of a good parent - who
makes clear her disapproval or bad behaviour without rejecting the child
- with the stigmatising shame of the modern criminal justice system.
Stigmatising shame labels the person rather than the act, and imposes a
status change which has generalised, deleterious, and often irreversible
consequences. The offender is given more incentives to contest the label than to repent the
behaviour, the sin which people try to avoid is as likely to be that of
being found out as that of behaving badly. With restorative justice the
community is involved in expressing disapproval, and in
providing and guaranteeing protection and redress for victims but
is also involved in supporting the perpetrator in his efforts to change
and in maintaining him as a member of the community.
The community
conference strategy they propose was adapted from the Maori culture of
New Zealand as a key element in an overall regulatory ideal. They apply the ideal of an enforcement pyramid, with prison at it
apex. An escalating repertoire of responses is provided ranging from
informal disapproval by family and friends, through reparative measures
decided upon by the neighbourhood conference, through to penal
sanctions, and, finally, for the most recalcitrant, imprisonment. The
big stick of penal sanctions, including imprisonment, is necessary to
reinforce the authority of restorative remedies. They argue for across
the board reductions in the resort to punitive sanctions and the
introduction of conference procedures for most offence types.
Conclusion: A new relationship between civil and
criminal justice?
In the early nineteenth
century domestic assault were not seen as a crime - indeed it was legal
for a man to beat his wife as long as the stick was not thicker than a
man’s thumb. Likewise rape of a wife was legal and was only
significant if it involved the 'property' of a man
The law on rape evolved to protect the theft of female sexual
property, not to protect women themselves. Rape violated not her bodily
integrity but the patriarchal ownership of her sexuality.
Therefore it was not possible for a man to rape his wife as she
belonged to him. On marriage women were therefore deemed to be their
husband’s property and up until the 1888 Married Women’s Property
Act a women’s earnings, if she had any, belonged to her husband. Up
until the 1969 Divorce Act a woman’s right to divorce was dependent on
the court’s view of her sexual morality. It is not until 1991 that
the marital rape exemption finally removed support for a
husband's demand for the right to non -consensual sex..
Seen within this
historical context, it is easier to understand why domestic violence is
still condoned. Even in the
late 1990s many do not consider violence against women is wrong. Burton
& Kitzinger (1998) in their in-depth study of young people's
attitudes towards sex, violence and relationships found widespread
acceptance of forced sex and physical violence against women in their
study of young people’s attitudes in Glasgow, Manchester and Fife. The
research, commissioned by the Zero Tolerance National Trust, was based
on a survey of 2039 young people mostly aged 14 and 21 and ten focus
groups discussions. When asked whether abuse violence against women was
ever acceptable, one in five men and one in ten women agreed. One in
four men thought it was OK to hit a woman if she had slept with someone
else. one in eight if she
was nagging, one in ten believed if
she had been disrespectful if she were his wife and 8% if she was his
girlfriend. Provocation such as nagging was sometimes seen as
justifiable violence. Forcing a woman to have sex was also widely
accepted and some men believed themselves incapable of stopping when at
a certain point of arousal.
Civil
courts are usually concerned with monetary compensation, but it would
not be difficult for civil injunction or awards for damages to make, for
example, the amount of damages, or the duration of the injunction
contingent on the perpetrator attending such courses. Such intervention
projects must rest on the two core principles underlying the pilot
domestic intervention projects: increasing
the safety of women and children and challenging men to take
responsibility for their behaviour. However, in view of the problems
addressed above, in particular the high number of men who drop out of
violence prevention programmes, I am in no way advocating a complete
displacement of criminal by civil proceedings. As the report by the
Justice committee on the role of the victim in criminal justice argues:
‘There will be victims and offences for which the criminal justice
response is the most appropriate one, victims and offences for which
civil justice is the best remedy, and a considerable number which need
to use both systems’ (Justice 1998: 54).
A
crucial precondition is that
support services to ensure the safety of women should be effective if
men are to attend such programmes as an alternative to custody. In 1997
one of the first of such pilot projects was set up in the London borough
of Hammersmith. This two year Domestic Violence
Pilot Project combines a Violence
Prevention Project (VPP)
working with men and a Women’s Support Service (WSS) working with
partners of men on VPP and women who self refer. The overall philosophy
is to increase women’s safety at the same time as reducing men’s
violence.
Criminal
justice agencies would have, in this scheme of things, three vital
roles.
Firstly, the violation
of injunctions (or the non-payment of damages) or the failure to attend
perpetrators courses where these were ordered. The Family Law Act both
streamlines the processes for applying for civil injunctions and aims at
ensuring that police powers of arrest are attached to the majority of
such injunctions. In future, if injunctions are breached, abusers should
increasingly face the sanctions of the criminal law. The problem is that
as the Dispatches (1998) programme found, judges in the civil court are
reluctant to send men who breach injunctions to prison. Training for
judges in this area is long overdue and must be seriously addressed by
the criminal justice system.
Secondly,
in some cases criminal prosecution could follow successful civil
proceedings. In rape cases for example if claimants were supported
through legal aid to take out civil proceedings and where successful,
the police and CPS could then decide whether to proceed to criminal
prosecution. Successful
civil action, although working with less stringent canons of proof,
provides a useful indicator of the likely outcome of a criminal action.
It is used in the US complex corporate and white collar crime cases as a
criteria for activating otherwise costly and lengthy criminal
proceedings whose outcome might otherwise be less certain. It is
interesting to speculate what the outcome of the O.J. Simpson case might
have been if the civil action for unlawful killing had preceded rather
than followed the unsuccessful criminal prosecution for murder. Civil
actions enable a great deal of evidence to be assembled and the police
do not have a monopoly of investigation. A successful civil action would
undermine the monopoly of wisdom of the CPS in deciding on evidential
sufficiency if not the public interest
Thirdly, in
cases where there was firm evidence, or where the defendant was
dangerous and ineligible for bail, then criminal proceedings could
proceed without civil proceedings. Such cases should be dealt with
quickly and should not be subject to the lengthy delays typical of the
courts today.
At an international
level violence against
women is on the agenda. In Beijing in 1995 the fourth UN World
Conference on Women focused on issues such as violence against women,
health, education, economic inequalities and power sharing and adopted a
Global Platform for Action to improve the status of women world wide.
One of the commitments made by the UK government was to ‘take action
to tackle the causes of violence against women... including legislation
against perpetrators, improving police and other agencies’ responses
and raising awareness of the issue’. The Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was ratified in 1997 by 160
countries and provides recognition of the need for reform of the legal
systems (Henderson 1997:11).
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(There are no statistics in the UK for prison rape but in the
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estimated that the number of rapes in US prisons is in excess of
60,000 taking place daily).
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