Victims as Offenders: The Paradox of Women's Violence in Relationships

Chapter 1: Defining the Dilemma

Beth cut her husband’s throat so badly that he had to be medivac-ed to the hospital; he almost died. He was constantly abusing her throughout their six-year marriage and at the time of the stabbing, she said he was beating the crap out of her and she grabbed a knife—it was the first thing that was near her . . . that’s what she felt she had to do to get out of the situation . . . —probation officer #1 Jenny was sexually abused by her brothers, and violently assaulted by her first husband continuously, and now, with her second husband, more continuous assault. Basically, what she did was after a particularly vicious assault, she took his clothes out in the living room and set them on fire. She was charged with arson. But the police records document a number of times that she has been the victim of battering . . . —probation officer #3 These statements illustrate the varied situations experienced by many women who find themselves arrested on domestic violence charges by an incident-driven criminal justice system that responds uniformly to cases of domestic violence without examining the motivations and consequences of such acts.1 In the two examples above, the authorities believed that the women broke the law, and these acts determined their subsequent arrests. By following the letter of the law, however, law enforcement officers often disregard the context in which victims of violence resort to using violence themselves. Often, what is most revealing are the antecedents to the incident that many battered victims share: they often act in self-defense, they may have long histories 1 Defining the Dilemma Chapter 1 of victimization at the hands of their male partners, and they may use a weapon to equalize the force or threat used by their partners, who are bigger and stronger than they are. Hence, some of these arrests seem inappropriate, particularly when battered women act in self-defense or when women are falsely charged by their savvy (male) batterers who have learned how to manipulate the system. So we see that there are victims of abuse who are arrested because they commit an illegal act, but this act occurs in the context of a long history of abuse (illustrated by Jenny in the second example above). This paradox gets to the crux of the matter: what is the appropriate criminal justice response to battered women who “assault” (as legally defined) their abuser, or do other illegal acts, and end up getting arrested, particularly when these acts of violence committed by victims are qualitatively different from acts of violence committed by batterers? The situation in which many battered women now find themselves is assuredly not the result that was envisioned when the cry for the criminalization of domestic violence was first heard. In particular, these arrest policies and their consequences raise multiple questions: Just what should the police do in situations where victims of violence in turn commit a violent act? Are police doing too good a job of making arrests and enforcing the law? Do police miss important contextual clues by being incident-driven in their investigations, rather than being contextually based? Given the devastating impact an arrest can have on victims’ lives as well as increasing their risk of further harm from retaliatory violence, how should we evaluate the success of domestic violence arrest policies? Are there actions that the police can take, such as determining the primary aggressor or uncovering the history of relationship abuse, that could have an effect on the course of action that police should follow? What if battered women did commit a technically “illegal” act—should they be treated the same as their (male) abusers? What do we want the prosecutor’s offices to do? This book explores one state’s experience grappling with the issues raised and faced by women who have been arrested for domestic violence offenses. While this book is about women arrested for domestic violence and the appropriateness of sending them to batterer intervention programs, it is essential to place this phenomenon within the larger landscape of criminal justice ideology and practices that operate today. As part of a political climate that promoted increases in victim protections and diminished concern about offenders’ rights, the 1980s ushered in an era of draconian crime-control ideology. The “war on drugs,” introduced in the 1970s by former president Nixon, followed by the broader “war on crime” of subsequent administrations, attacked perceived loopholes...