Everyday Harm: Domestic Violence, Court Rites, and Cultures of Reconciliation (review)

Mindie Lazarus-Black’s readable and engaging book on the passage and implementation of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago’s 1991 Domestic Violence Act makes significant contributions to the ongoing scholarly debate on why legislative advances do not always translate into real-life gains for women. The book is based on quantitative analysis of cases brought under the act from 1997 to 1998 in a town in northern Trinidad, which she pseudonymously calls Pelau to protect the privacy of her informants—as well as on voluminous qualitative research consisting of courtroom observations and interviews with legal professionals, litigants, and other people in the community during the year under study and also subsequently. Lazarus-Black integrates ethnographic narratives about individual litigants throughout the text and succeeds in communicating some of the stories behind the numbers to give the reader a sense of how the legal system works.

The first chapter describes how Trinidad and Tobago became the first English-speaking Caribbean nation to prohibit domestic violence by separate legislation, thus allowing victims of domestic violence to seek protection orders in the magistrate court, which hears family law cases. Lazarus-Black describes the actors involved in the passage of the law and their process of negotiation. She attributes the passage of the law to four factors: national desire to modernize the state; the expansion of education following independence, especially for women; a strong economy; and the local and global women’s movement. Lazarus-Black argues that criminalizing domestic violence “regender[s] the state” by recognizing women’s needs and experiences, although in a limited fashion because gay and lesbian people were prohibited from bringing petitions under the Act (21). The law in many respects was a radical challenge to the traditional patriarchical family because it altered the “boundaries between public and private matters with respect to family life” (23).

Despite the passage of the law, however, Lazarus-Black’s quantitative research, presented in chapter two, reveals that over 77 percent of cases brought under the Domestic Violence Act in Pelau during the year in which the study was conducted were dismissed or withdrawn, revealing a gap between what critical legal scholars call “law on the books” and “law in action.” Lazarus-Black attributes this gap to “structural deflection,” a process by which society discourages subordinated groups from challenging hegemonic power in a sustained manner. She describes a range of reasons why cases drop out of the system, including “time, money, and distance from the courthouse, fear of reprisal, concern for children’s welfare, issues of privacy, and support (or lack thereof) from relevant third parties” as well as spatial design and organization of courts, busy dockets, judicial style, and the influence of attorneys (59). Lazarus-Black compares her findings from Pelau to research from other areas of Trinidad and Tobago, noting similar rates of dismissal and withdrawal. Even when a case results in an act of protection, women rarely bring charges for breaching the order and men rarely serve any time in prison. Lazarus-Black notes that women bring 80 percent of cases, mostly against men, while 11 percent of cases are brought by men against women. There was some evidence of gender disparity in courts’ treatment of litigants, but in “gender-predictable” ways.

In chapter three, Lazarus-Black offers a typology of successful domestic violence applications, explaining what it takes to succeed in achieving relief under the Act in Trinidad and Tobago. Using the stories of two successful complainants as examples, she argues that the most commonly successful cases involve older women with alcoholic husbands, mothers with addicted sons, women in common-law relationships seeking to get men out of their homes, and women with obsessed partners. She argues that two kinds of cases are most likely to result in protection orders: when a “believable and deserving” complainant can communicate a chronological and consistent story of abuse that meets the literal terms...