California: Domestic Violence Intervention Accountability
Part VI: Recommendations For Change
August 31, 2005
Casey Gwinn, is the chair of the California Attorney General Task Force on Local Criminal Justice Response to Domestic Violence. The task force report is “Keeping the Promise” Victim Safety and Batterer Accountability,” http://www.safestate.org/index.cfm?navID=9 .
The task force report presents four recommendations to the California Attorney General. Although there are a great many people involved in this report, only for matters of simplicity, Gwinn as the chair of the task force should be held accountable for the reports failings. This paper addresses recommendations made by the authors of this critique.
As noted in Part I, what “Keeping the Promise” and California law ignores is that the issuance of restraining orders, mandatory arrest and no-drop-prosecutions, batterer intervention programs, and mandatory health practitioner reports can be positive and productive concerning some “battering” behavior and they can be negative and counter productive concerning “family conflict.”
The Red Herring
There continues a seemingly endless, negative and fruitless argument between many domestic violence advocates, women’s and men’s rights organizations, and individuals concerning domestic violence that:
When data is collected from battered women’s shelters or self reporting criminal justice surveys women do appear to be the primary victim. However, data collected from family violence surveys document the men and women report victimization at approximately the same rate.
From this disparate data the fine line that often separates science from politics becomes blurred by those who believe that if you do not believe 100% that sexism, the oppression of women and the patriarchy is the root cause for most domestic violence, you must be 100% against them. Far too often ideological feminist scholars and researchers predetermine which position their research will support before their research actually begins.
In general sociologists agree that the “subjectivity of personal values” is a form of “bias” and hence should be avoided in favor of objectivity. Objectivity is a scholar’s personal neutrality in conducting research (Macionis, 1997). In the first paragraph on page one of the, Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Womenhttp://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf the authors write:
In unprecedented numbers, scholars trained in such diverse disciplines as philosophy, literature, law, and sociology examined violence against women in the context of feminist ideology.
Hence, the two above ideological feminist authors, similar to many others providing research have made the decision to change traditional “objective” research to “subjective” ideological feminist biased research that presents data in a manner that fosters the ideological feminist preconceived idea of domestic violence victimization (Macionis, 1997).
These above authors are ideological feminists. They did not want men included in the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) survey and they had only women interview women while only half of the male’s were interviewed by men.
The NVAW survey documents that more males 53.8% than females 40% experienced some type of physical assault by an adult caretaker as a child. The survey also documents that 1.3% of women and 0.9% of men were physically assaulted by any type of intimate partner annually. The latter, at face value, appears to document women are the primary victim’s until you read that the survey also documents that women report their victimization more than twice as often as men.
One does not need to be a scientist or a scholar to recognize the relevance of the above paragraph. Despite their own results the authors declared that women should be considered the primary or more important victim. Their ideological feminism caused them to present data and reach conclusions that are not synonymous with the truth that they actually report on page 29, 30 and 31 of their report. The authors are unwilling or unable to acknowledge that truth in their conclusions. It appears that their ideology may have clouded their both vision and version of the truth.
Criminal Justice Data
Criminal justice data does documents that women suffer from greater physical injuries and exhibit more fear of their intimate partner than men. Criminal justice data also documents that more men than women are violent criminals. It is undeniable that physical strength and contemporary gender and cultural mores play important roles in those differences.
Although many domestic violence advocates frame the issue of intimate partner homicide as a gender issue (women are killed simply because they are women) criminal justice data documents otherwise. http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm. Data clearly documents, given the context of the violence, that some women can be as violent as some men.
Data document that men commit more homicides than women. However, sexism has little to do with that data as it documents that men are far more violent against other men than they are against women
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm#contents. In fact men kill themselves far more frequently than they kill women http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm.
Homicide data documents that more females than males are the victims of intimae partner homicides. However, homicides account for less than ½ of 1% (0.3) of all family violence between 1998 and 2002.
It is generally accepted by all scholars and researchers that the behavior of a populace in general cannot be predetermined from the aggregate data of the behavior of an extremely small subgroup of that population (Macionis, 1997).
Intimate partner homicides are extremely rare vents. In fact the less than one percent (0.3) includes all victims of family violence, not only intimate partners. Excluding homicides, females account for 58% of victims of family violence and males 42% www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/fvs.htm .
The time has come for public policy makes to question the wisdom of pitting the victimization reported by women against the victimization reported by men? All public policy makers need to question why women’s rights groups, who often know little to nothing about the complexities of the criminal justice system, want to pit women and men, who are domestic violence victims, against each other?
Why is it expected by criminal justice interveners, domestic violence advocates and public policy makers that men need to be the victims of physical injuries as often as women or men need to be as fearful as women in order to receive equal empathy and support? Why is male victimization so often minimized, marginalized, and ignored? If domestic violence is unacceptable in any form then why is it not equally intolerable for either gender to perpetrate abuse?
While some domestic violence advocates and a few public policy makers claim they are equally concerned about male victimization the fact is that billions of public and private funds are being spent on female victimization and little to nothing is being spent concerning male victimization. Almost all ideological feminist domestic violence websites that document dating violence note the number of females victims while ignoring male victimization Are not our sons as worthy as our daughters?
A New Awareness
When there are suggestions for change from advocates who are equally concerned about all victims of domestic violence they are often accused by feminist ideologists of being part of the backlash against the victimization of women and of women’s rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is also common for those who resist change to attack the bearer of the message and not the message itself. Not everyone who suggests that contemporary interventions are biased and that change is needed is a misogynist.
Advocates for Change
Ellen Pence pioneered the Duluth model for domestic violence intervention. Pence, believes that “one-size-fits-all” policies similar to those in California are wrong. She believes, as do the authors of this paper, that too often, offenders are placed in programs that do not suit their needs. She also believes many people that are charged with “domestic violence” are not batterers.
Pence designed her community wide intervention to address the most violent of the predators and those who are chronic batterers. Pence claims that if her partner cheated on her and she, in a fit of anger, slapped her partner that does not make Pence a “batterer” http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/news/justice/. Pence is not a misogynist.
The Ms. Foundation for Women (MsFW) http://www.ms.foundation.org/ is concerned first and foremost with women’s rights. This organization has concluded in its report, Safety & Justice for All: Examining the Relationship between the Women’s Anti-Violence Movement and the Criminal Legal System, http://www.ms.foundation.org/user-assets/PDF/Program/safety_justice.pdf that our public policy makers have in fact, put in place policies and practices that do endanger many victims.
In fact the MsFW has concluded that those who are being endangered most by these mandatory policies and practices are the very same victims who need help the most. The MsFW believes that contemporary public policy makers should abandon the use of mandatory legal practices such as mandatory reporting, mandatory arrest, and no drop prosecution policies.
The MsFW believes that many policies and practices that were intended to help families have instead harmed many families. The MsFW also believes that these policies and practices have eroded the rights of both men and women who are being arrested and prosecuted. No one is going to acuse the MsFW of being a misogynist organization.
Ellen Goodman in an article for the Boston Globe acknowledges that women initiate violence nearly as often – though not as lethally – as men. Goodman writes that men and women are approximately equally caring and empathetic. Some men are more so than women and some women more so than men.
Goodman writes, “When the social constraints are off – surely when women are rewarded for violence – they can mimic the worst behavior of men.” Goodman is not a misogynist. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/23/tender_terrorists/
Linda G. Mills, is a domestic violence survivor and the author of, Insult to Injury. Mills believes that mandatory intervention assumes a false omnipotence. Mills notes that in California this false omnipotence grew from the paradoxical claim of Gwinn and former police sergeant Anne O’Dell that the way to help women is to remove their right of choice. This seems chillingly similar to the fallacious and potentially harmful claim that one must burn the village in order to save it.
Recommendation One
Read and heed the research. Over the last decade there have been numerous important findings in the many scientific empirical studies. If you are working in or with the criminal justice system and you continue to ignore the two U. S. Department of Justice sponsored reports below, you very well may be instrumental in harming as many victims as you are helping.
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report, Controlling Violence Against Women: A Research Perspective on the 1994 VAWA’s Criminal Justice Impacts must be read by those concerned about domestic violence www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/grants/197137.pdf . The recommendations from the California task force may very well have been quite different if just a few of the members had read this report.
This above report notes that:
Above all, they [public policy makers] need to know that their policies and practices will not endanger women [emphasis added]. Unfortunately, there are too few preventive impact evaluations of policies already in place and fewer still that approach methodological standards insuring sound data for shaping policy.
The single prosecution policy found to protect victims in Indianapolis was to permit victims who initiated their complaints at the prosecutor’s office to drop charges, a finding that has been interpreted as evidence of victims empowerment [emphasis added] or self-protection (Ford, 1993)
An analysis of offender interviews in the Milwaukee (SARP) experiment similarly found that when police were seen as having treated the suspect fairly, he was less likely to again batter the same victim within 12 months of his arrest (Paternoster, Barme, Bachman, and Sherman, 1997).
The second study that must be read is The National Research Council (NRC) report http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.htmlAdvancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women notes that researchers and scholars who do not distinguish between violence, abuse, or battering may do more harm than good. California, or in fact most federal or state legislators ignore that important distinction.
The above report note:
Without consistency in the use of terms across studies, research in this field will remain fragmented; new measurement instruments that have been developed may not receive adequate testing or experimental use in studies that can demonstrate their power, and accurate prevalence and incidence estimates, especially of severe violence, will remain elusive.
The research shows that legal sanctions do have a deterrent effect, although modest in magnitude, but that these effects vary by characteristics of perpetrators, their relationships with their partners, their stake in social conformity, and factors influencing the decision to impose sanctions.
As previous National Research Council committee found, the design of prevention and control strategies – programs and services available to victims and offenders that aim to decrease the number of new cases of assault or abusive behavior, reduce the risk of death or disability from violence, and extend life after a violent event – frequently is driven by ideology and stakeholder interests rather than by plausible theories and scientific evidence of cause [emphasis added].
Without evaluations in place, lacking methodological standards and without data to document they would not be harmful to some domestic violence victims the California Assembly members have ignored most unbiased contemporary scientific empirical studies and passed legislation that created, “one-size-fits-all” mandatory policies and procedures that are based on little to no research that documents their effectiveness. Worse still, the California Assembly members have ignored studies that document that the policies they passed may be more harmful than helpful.
Recommendation Two
Do away with all mandatory policies. Mandatory legal policies and practices have silenced many domestic violence victims, driven others away from seeking help and caused others to lose any and all control over their lives and the lives of their children.
In fact, many of our mandatory domestic violence policies and practices are eerily similar to the mandatory drug policies and practices. It is mystifying why progressives and liberals who oppose mandatory arrest, sentencing policies for drug abuse do not oppose mandatory domestic violence arrests, policies and practices.
Recommendation Three
Do not have in place any “one-size-fits-all” interventions. All feminist researchers argue against any “one-size-fits-all” interventions for women who are arrested for domestic violence because of the many negative consequences presented by that policy. If these ideological feminist researchers would look at the issue “objectively” they could then understand that the same is true for men.
Recommendation Four
Treat our sons the same way we treat our daughters. All domestic violence organizations must be bias free. The president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund http://endabuse.org/ , Esta Soler claims that:
Until now, there has been little help and support for those who want to teach their sons to reject abuse and help their daughters avoid becoming victims of dating, domestic or sexual violence.
Because of her feminist ideology it can not occur to Soler, and many other domestic violence advocates that they have become the very same people that feminism rightly railed against at the end of the 20 th century.
The majority of domestic violence organizations, similar to the National Domestic Violence Hotline http://www.ndvh.org/educate/abuse_in_america.html, because of their ideological feminism only note that one in five female high school students (a daughter) reports being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner.
The above agency, similar to most ideological feminist domestic violence agencies that receive millions of dollars from the federal government has willingly, because that truth refutes their philosophic belief, has chosen to ignore the plight of our sons.
These organizations universally ignore the fact that the survey, that they use to present only gender specific data, also reports that 8.8% of females and 8.9% of males (a son) reports being physically assaulted and 11.9% of females (a daughter) and 6.1% of males (a son) reports being sexually assaulted. What ever happened to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
The American Sociologist Association (ASA) has formal guidelines for conducting and presenting research. Very simply put the ASA believes that research must be both technically competent and unbiased. Researchers must release all their findings without omitting specific data that upholds only their position on an issue.
Conclusion
The authors of this paper have attempted to place online URL links, when ever and where ever possible, to the information they have presented. Perhaps if Gwinn, the California Attorney General, or some of the members of the task force could review the above studies they might revise their recommendations, many of which are based on ideological beliefs and not empirical data.
There is hardly a more contentious issue in the criminal justice system than the issue of domestic violence. This task force has decided to repackage the policies of the 20 th century and present them as answers to the dilemmas we face early in the 21 st.
It appears that the task force, far too often, accepts ideological assumptions as fact and ignores research to the contrary. It appears that members of this task force all too frequently did not attempt to connect the empirical research dots. Instead, they have presented their report in an ideological manner that is not supported by data and an unbiased scientific analysis of the issue.
Given the importance of the issue and the continued controversy that surrounds this debate, one that far too often drowns out the needs, desires and the voice of the families involved, it is time for an unbiased assessment of the data and research.
Richard L. Davis & Jan E. Brown
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Richard L. Davis (Lt.ret) is the author of Domestic Violence: Fact and Fallacies, an adjunct instructor of criminal justice courses for Quincy College at Plymouth and the VP of www.Familynonviolence.org. He may be reached at rldavis@post.harvard.edu
Jan E. Brown is the Founder and Executive Director of the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women, a national crisis line that offers support and services to victims of domestic violence. www.noexcuse4abuse.org She may be reached at: help@noexcuse4abuse.org
