Moving beyond the criminal justice paradigm: a radical restorative justice approach to intimate abuse

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, March, 2004 by Peggy Grauwiler, Linda G. Mills

These assumptions point to the need for inclusion of individual definitions of violence, cultural differences in the abuse experience and its relationship to intervention and prevention strategies. Inclusion of individual expressions of abuse helps develop a different set of assumptions that permit us to develop a more inclusive strategy--a restorative justice model--that does not excuse abusers or blame victims, but instead reflects the total psychic experience of intimate abuse. Before we describe such a model, it is helpful to understand what assumptions would underpin it.

A Different Set Of Assumptions

If we begin to allow ourselves to think critically about the limitations of a patriarchal analysis of intimate abuse and a criminal justice response, we may be able to move beyond the polarization of intimate abuse as just a "woman's issue". In turn, we might then be better positioned to understand why women are choosing to avoid the criminal justice system, and develop interventions that comport with their needs and desires. Our responsibility as a society is to address the entire problem. The women that are currently being served by the criminal justice system represent a small portion of the population that need their problems addressed.

Perhaps the most sacred of the assumptions--violence runs one way from men to women--is the key to changing how we think about intimate abuse. In 1974, Straus, Gelles and Steinmetz reported that husbands and wives committed nearly equal amounts of physical violence in intimate relationships. According to these findings, 12.1 percent of husbands reported that they committed violent acts against their female partners, and 11.6 percent of wives reported acts of violence against male partners. Ten years later, their results were essentially confirmed: 11.3 percent of husbands reported violence against their wives, and 12.1 percent of wives reported violence against their husbands (Straus & Gelles, 1986). In these studies, women and men in equal numbers report being the sole victim of violence in the intimate relationship (Billingham & Sack, 1987). These studies do not suggest that women's violence is a reaction to men's violence. More than one hundred studies have since confirmed these or similar findings (Straus, 1999).

Researchers have found that when they inquire into "physical violence" rather than "injury", they are more likely to elicit admissions by women that they too have been violent. In one study, 37 percent of the women admitted that they had perpetrated physical aggression against their male partners, compared with 22 percent of men who admitted perpetrating physical aggression against their female partners (Magdol, Moffitt, Caspi, Newman, Fagan & Silva, 1997). Severe physical aggression by women also measured at significant rates. Nineteen percent of women, versus 6 percent of men, reported using such behaviors as kicking, hitting, biting, hitting with an object, using or threatening the use of a knife or gun, and beating up. In this same study, 95 percent of women and 86 percent of men reported at least one act of verbal aggression against a partner (Magdol et. al., 1997).