Criminal Justice's View on Domestic Violence - Research Paper Example

The Response of Criminal Justice Administration to Domestic Violence Introduction It is a commonly known fact that any criminal justice administration will be preoccupied with criminal behavior, punishment and rehabilitation. Criminal behavior has been the core of criminology, even though work in this field coexists with several academic disciplines, such as psychology and sociology (Gaines, 2007). In relation to the punishment of criminals, the various objectives and rationales for punishment, whether they are basically rehabilitative or retributive, have ignited persistent philosophical debate (Gaines, 2007). Nonetheless, this academic preoccupation with the offender has been to the detriment of the victim. Undoubtedly, the victim usually seems to be included in criminological debate and theorizing simply out of political rightness or civility. The implications of this exclusion are significant (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). The lack of scholarly attention has reduced the victim into an excess baggage, a condition that has resulted in considerable public policy making uninformed by the condition, needs and wants of the victim within the criminal justice administration. One of the most neglected victims in the criminal justice system is victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence against women, prior to the early 1970s, was widely treated as a personal or private issue (Hoyle, 1998). Resolution of conflicts between spouses was left alone except in instances of severe injury. Criminal law was regarded to be the final alternative in the handling of domestic violence, and detainment was only seldom exercises as a provisional means of preserving order (Hoyle, 1998). At present, it is acknowledged that the divide between private and public crime is less different, and aggression between couples has become a more leading public policy concern than ever before (Davis, Lurigio & Herman, 2007). Enhanced public interference within the private domain has been authorized by new police forces, new legislation, and varying opinions towards state involvement (Davis et al., 2007). Domestic violence is at present, theoretically, identified as ‘real’ crime and the reality that it usually takes place in the home does not remove it from its identification as a criminal offense (Cramer, 2004). This essay will evaluate the manner in which cases of domestic violence are dealt with by the criminal justice administration. It explores the level to which the decisions made by prosecutors and police can be interpreted in terms of offense severity and evidential condition, and the degree to which they are influenced by the unofficial ‘tenets’ of the organizational culture. And more specifically, the roles of victims, suspects, prosecutors, and police officers with regard to these issues are examined. Evaluating Police Judgment In clarifying what they regarded to be the differential treatment of public and private violence, feminist scholars have claimed that policing is not established by the law but that it functions within a discrepancy built by discretionary powers (Hoyle, 1998). Examining cultural explanations of police behavior, several have concentrated on ideas such as sexist attitudes, police misogyny, and the ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’ victims. The assumption, about police inefficiencies being caused by their apathy for such victims, has been very compelling that it has been recognized as a ‘fact’ (Dawson, 2004). A number of these investigations which have adopted a ‘gendered’ approach have disregarded other structural or cultural causes of police incompetence at the site of domestic conflicts, disregarding, as plain alibis, officers’ organizational or legal justifications for failing to take suspects into custody (Davis et al., 2007). In contrast, research on policing which have included a component of structuralism has added only a few instances of domestic crime within a larger group of other crimes. This may be due to the fact that domestic violence has been fairly downgraded from ‘conventional’ studies of the police and considered as a feminist concern (Davis et al., 2007): a concern which it is merely ‘justified’ to view from a ‘gendered’ point of view. Police rules on domestic violence are founded upon the assumption that laws, and a productive utilization of police resources, can safeguard women from potential violence (Dawson, 2004). They arose from feminist condemnation of the police ineffectiveness in protecting women. Thus, the belief is that the police have the capability, if guided and helped to do so, safeguarding people from crime (Dawson, 2004). Not merely is this unfounded, but it is founded on an erroneous theory of what policing is about. The assumption that policing can be regulated by policies and laws is founded on a core belief that policing is chiefly about fighting crime and that this is attained by law enforcement (Hoyle, 1998). Edwards (1989) asserted that there is a ‘public/private divide’ in theoretical law and actual law which structures and endorses a different degree of reaction to similar behavior in the two areas, involving a different degree of priorities and responses of the police. In reality, Edwards (1989) declared, the lowest priority was domestic violence. Thus, law enforcers are willing to make arrests in public conflicts, while hardly ever detaining men who are hostile to their spouses in secret. This indicates that the police use up most of their time imposing the law strictly, with the exception of domestic conflicts where they seldom interfere and if they do they try merely to maintain peace (Edwards, 1989). Nonetheless, not only do majority of scholars, particularly cultural thinkers, begin from the saying that policing greatly depends on discretion. The role of the police, they claim, concerns maintenance of order and service provision not normally realized by law enforcement. While the role of the police involves law enforcement and crime prevention, there is a broad range of other administration and service duties including traffic and environmental tasks, conflict resolution, crime prevention and resolution, and aid in times of crisis (Gaines, 2007). Certainly, as argued by Morgan and Newburn (1997), law enforces deal with every abnormal occurrences or conflicts in the community and the larger society. Since Banton (1964) and Bittner’s (1967) observations, a variety of North American and British empirical investigations have demonstrated that somewhat modest police time is used up on real criminal cases (Hoyle, 1998). Most empirical studies has been encouraged by the idea that police practice commonly moves away from legal norms and from an aspiration to remove the discrepancy between theoretical law and actual law (Gaines, 2007). The literature has demonstrated that the police usually under-implement the law by using their judgment not to arrest. This use of discretion has mainly been elaborated in relation to police working character and informal police practice (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). Feminist scholars took hold of the findings of general research on policing concerning the discretion used by rank and file law enforcers to clarify the small number of arrests in cases of domestic violence (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). Thus, while feminist scholars aspired to establish new scheme and question the agreement of criminology and sociology (Davis et al., 2007), they learned a great deal from sociological theories and empirical paradigms applied in the general policing research. Feminist critics were correct to concentrate considerable interest on officers’ privileges and powers for using judgment at cases of domestic violence. The law of the criminal justice system seldom determines action (Gaines, 2007). Rather, it permits its agents to decide based on an array of other organizational and social aspects (Hoyle, 1998). As argued by Hawkins (1992), discretion is unavoidable due to the fact that the realization of policy into action entails the involvement and decisions of individuals. It is the channel by which law is actually realized. Nevertheless, several scholars have underestimated the restrictions that the organizational factors and criminal law can enforce (Cramer, 2004), and have disregarded the victim’s role in the resolution of conflict. Moreover, they have a tendency to propose that discretion is used impulsively, emphasizing only gender and biases about specific kinds of victim (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). This essay argues that possessing discretionary privileges does not imply that individual police officers have the unlimited freedom to take action as they desire. They are at times restrained by organizational aspects or criminal law (Gaines, 2007). What is more significant is that law enforcers do not use discretion in an erratic or arbitrary manner, nor do they, generally, decide based entirely on biases and gender stereotypes (Hawkins, 1992). Instead, the use of discretion is formed according to wider situational and cultural principles. Within the paradigm of interactionism there are various and opposing social interpretations of any particular social phenomenon. These are not fixed interpretations but are continuously changing and are exposed to other social factors and mechanisms (Hoyle, 1998). Law enforcers who find themselves as agents in difficult domestic circumstances should try to make sense of what has taken place and what reaction the different actors (e.g. the victim/s) expect, or certainly will recognize, from them (Cramer, 2004). To facilitate this they do not thoughtlessly abide by the criminal law or implement regulation, but, instead, read the information given to them and attempt to understand it. Victim’s Assessment of Policing Whether a victim views policing or police response as correct or not may rely on how she perceives domestic violence and how she views her capability of taking successful action to take care of it (Davis et al., 2007). Moreover how she believes that the criminal justice administration operates and what she knows about the obtainable assistance, and will act in response to her grievance, will influence levels of satisfaction (Davis et al., 2007). Prosecutors and police officers do not believe that it is in the interest of the victim to take legal action against crimes stemming from domestic violence when the victim is in opposition to this settlement (Morgan & Newburn, 1997). Several feminist critics have opposed the tradition of permitting a victim of domestic violence to pull out a testimony once it has been given and, hence, argue that hesitant witnesses should be forced to give evidence (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). The Victim Support InterAgency Working Party on Domestic Violence (1992) equally asserted that the resolution to continue with a prosecution should not be the obligation of women who reveal the offense as they may at times be forced by violence to pull out. If needed, the report proposed, victims should be forced to testify, as long as assistance and protection can be provided. Arguments supporting detainment, prosecution, and forcing witnesses have emerged within a political and social environment which has seldom challenged the correctness of the criminal justice administration as a means of addressing domestic violence (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002). Certainly, in explaining and evaluating police response and the broader criminal justice administration (Gaines, 2007), scholars have tended to conclude that to assume castigatory legal prosecution against offenders is both a productive and favorable way of addressing domestic violence. Conclusions This essay explored a strikingly different feature of the encounter between domestic violence and the criminal justice administration, the treatment of the administration of those who react to domestic violence by brutal retribution. Courts and prosecutors have overlooked or in several instances been ignorant of the consequences of domestic violence upon the behavior or personality of the victim. This has been hampered by patriarchal beliefs of the appropriate behavior of violated women that resulted in operational characterizations of how a woman must react. When a woman reacts not by the prescribed way of submissive compliance, but rather by slaughtering her offender, the criminal justice administration is presented with a problem. On the one hand, the customary notion of ‘mens rea’, or the intention to kill, sensibly seems improper in the setting of an abused woman’s need to stop the torture. Conversely, long-established legal notions of temporary insanity and self-defense include limitations making them evidently insufficient to include this problematic occurrence. A brutal response may seem intentional to someone who does not understand the economic, psychological, and other restrictions confronted by women caught in violent relationships. At present, to the point that the criminal justice administration acknowledges any dilemma, informal resolutions dominate. Prosecutors who determinedly require assurance may propose that sentencing be more merciful due to the occurrences surrounding the final criminal act. Furthermore, in acknowledging the insufficiency of the criminal justice administration, numerous police officers, prosecutors, and other criminal justice agents will be able to respond appropriately, both subjectively and objectively. References Banton, M. (1964). The Policeman in the Community. London: Tavistock. Bittner, E. (1967). The Police on Skid-Row: A Study of PeaceKeeping. American Sociological Review , 32. Buzawa, C.G. & Buzawa, E.S. (eds). (1992). Domestic Violence: The Changing Criminal Justice. Westport, CT: Auburn House. Buzawa, E.S. & Buzawa, C.G. (2002). Domestic Violence: The Criminal Justice Response. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Cramer, E. (2004). Unintended Consequences of Constructing Criminal Justice as a Dominant Paradigm in Understanding and Intervening in Intimate Partner Violence. Women's Studies Quarterly , 164+. Davis, R.C., Lurigio, A.J. & Herman, S.A. (2007). Victims of Crime. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Dawson, M. (2004). Rethinking the Boundaries of Intimacy at the End of the Century: The Role of Victim-Defendant Relationship in Criminal Justice Decision Making Over Time. Law & Society Review , 105+. Edwards, S. (1989). Policing Domestic Violence: Women, the Law and the State. London: Sage. Gaines, L. (2007). Criminal Justice in Action: The Core. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. Hawkins, K. (1992). The Use of Legal Discretion: Perspectives from Law and Social Science. In K. Hawkins, The Uses of Discretion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hoyle, C. (1998). Negotiating Domestic Violence: Police, Criminal Justice, and Victims. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Morgan, R. & Newburn, T. (1997). The Future of Policing. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Victim Support. (199). Domestic Violence: Report of a National InterAgency Working Party on Domestic Violence. 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