Moral and legal obligations to address issues of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are now of global concern. At a regional level, the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), 2014, provides legally binding standards to improve the prevention of violence, the protection of victims, and the prosecution of perpetrators through a set of integrated policies, calling for a stronger coordination of legal and community-based responses (Council of Europe, 2011). Although at the time of writing this chapter, the UK had yet to ratify the Istanbul Convention, the last 10â15 years has also seen a powerful policy rhetoric materialize in the UK, advocating the need for more effective interdisciplinary, multi-agency working and coordinated community responses to issues of DVA. From the late 1990s onwards, professional partnership networks have emerged, pursuing collective responsibilities for protection, prevention, and intervention. However, some of these groupings have remained narrow and self-referential in their outlook (Dobash & Dobash, 1998), with the ideologies of the larger leading organisations tending to dominate (Nash, 2010). The additional benefits of partnership working have also been differentially pursued by policymakers and service providers, which may, in turn, be viewed as: a strategy to ensure that a joint, prompt, and effective response is made to cases where victims/survivors and children may be in imminent danger; an opportunity to improve, coordinate, innovate, and expand the range of DVA services available; a strategy to address prior evaluations of poor practice by a single agency; a mechanism by which the resourcing of a particular service may continue; or an opportunity to streamline funding overall.
The various aspects of interdisciplinary work on DVA have, therefore, been pursued by a range of quite distinct agency alliances, although it is the case that some DVA specialist agencies are becoming increasingly compelled to work across borders in order to sustain any consistent level of resourcing. Larger organisations, particularly those within the criminal justice system, have primarily sought partners who are seen to complement their own core function, aims and responsibilities, rather than pursuing new opportunities for joint innovation. The legal world, both civil and criminal, whilst subject to some significant levels of external scrutiny and independent evaluation, is often notably disengaged from wider interdisciplinary discourses on DVA. As such, the law develops in practice primarily through the legal analysis of issues of definition, evidence, legal processes and procedures. Other agencies, such as the Probation Service, have seen their core functions and aims shift dramatically over the last two decades, with centralised management and public protection priorities taking hold (Burke & Collet, 2015). This, in turn, has resulted in a significant change in the organizationâs relationships with both voluntary and private sector partners (FitzGibbons & Lea, 2014).
The modernisation of public services through the development of a performance culture based on target setting and managerial control has been a central tenet of the successive labour, coalition, and conservative UK governments from 1997 onwards. Such developments have been promoted as a means of driving up standards via a mixed economy of service provision achieved through competitive tendering. Considerable efforts have been made by specialist DVA services to positively frame these developments as opportunities for greater creativity and more effective coordination between agencies. However, the pressures of commercial contracting and payments attached to statistical outcomes have resulted in increased fragmentation in the longer term (see Turgoose, Chap. 6). This has served to further exacerbate inconsistencies nationally in the support available to DVA victims/survivors and the interventions available for DVA perpetrators. A partnership ethos can quickly be replaced by one of suspicion and competition. Within this climate, achieving any comprehensive understanding of current strategies to address DVA and their effectiveness remains challenging and the need for a greater cross-fertilisation of concerns, evidence and ideas across different intellectual disciplines, identified by Dobash and Dobash (1998), remains obvious today. However, the contemporary request is clearly set against quite a different background and âintellectualâ debate is no longer reserved for the different schools of thought within academia, but traverses across a broad selection of professional roles and lobbying groups.
New campaigns have arisen, resulting in an ever widening recognition of the diverse nature of DVA, with a complex mix of vulnerabilities and experiences (Martin, Chap. 9; Oakley and Kinmond, Chap. 10; Barnes and Donovan, Chap. 14). The increasing public awareness of DVA has also seen the emergence of some exciting advancements, as those agencies that were not traditionally recognised as first responders realise their potential to do more (Burnet, Chap. 11). Other more established territorial boundaries have also started to shift. For example, DVA specialist agencies and social work teams are becoming increasingly more involved in work with DVA perpetrators (Hilder and Freeman, Chap. 13). The risk models that have underpinned more formal frameworks, such as Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs), have come under increasing scrutiny (see Robinson and Payton, Chap. 12) and there is now a greater emphasis on early intervention and prevention work with children and young people. This has led to greater social care involvement in DVA issues (Little and Garland, Chap. 7; Crowther-Dowey, Gillespie and Hopkins, Chap. 8). Ascertaining thresholds for the criminalisation of DVA behaviours becomes increasingly challenging as a mixed economy of service providers continues to expand across the statutory, voluntary, and private sectors. Questions are raised, such as whether the ongoing legal pursuit of DVA as a violation of human rights (McQuigg, Chap. 2) is contradictory to developments which seek to place interventions within a family domain and if not, is it clear how and when different approaches may apply? The legal system itself appears to have some internal challenges to face, as the survival of specialist domestic violence court provisions remains uncertain (Bettinson, Chap. 5) whilst new substantive legal definitions of DVA, which include coercion and control, enter into force. The law will need to acquire a sophisticated understanding of the psychological impact of DVA, which it has traditionally struggled to address (Bishop, Chap. 4). New powers of policing have also emerged, based in civil law and again with potential implications for developments in policing practice as agents of prevention rather than prosecution (Burton, Chap. 3). Clearly, therefore, as knowledge of DVA in relation to the question âwho does what to whom?â (Hester, 2009) continues to expand, the questions of âwho should do what with whom, when, why and how?â are becoming increasingly complex to answer.
This edited collection does not profess to offer a solution to the aforementioned questions; rather, it provides a range of perspectives that inform the debate. There are some clear limitations to such a discourse without the full appraisal of those who have experienced DVA and the profile of the victimâs/survivorâs voice continues to remain stronger within some disciplinary perspectives more than others. There are, of course, also many other âperspectives,â which may have been sought. However, in casting the net more widely, it is inevitable that some significant elements of the catch will slip by while others will remain reluctant to swim in shared waters. There is no exclusionary intention and the core priorities of the Istanbul Convention are all encompassed here.
The contributing authors take various positions on the benefits and limitations of addressing issues of DVA via a single unit of analysis, the most commonly applied being that of gender and reflections on the advantages of an intersectional approach to understandings of, and responses to, DVA experiences are apparent. Whilst overarching international activity continues to root the issue of DVA in the context of broader gender inequalities and patriarchal power relations, the potency of this framework varies across DVA service provider activities in the UK. A gender-neutral approach to the application of legal tools and protective measures, organisational policy, practice development, and the delivery of staff training is seen as a more palatable approach by some, which may lead to greater inroads in terms of increasing general awareness and sensitivity to issues of DVA. However, for others, any blanket dismissal of the clear potential for gender to be a matter of significance in the commission of DVA is also of great concern, to the detriment of the development of effective practice with victims/survivors and perpetrators, both male and female. However, examinations of individual, interactional, contextual and ideological issues pertaining to the occurrence of DVA are variably engaged with by those responsible for protection, prevention, and intervention measures. Compatible conclusions may not always be reached, but this may improve with a more open and more benign approach to interdisciplinary dialogue.
The conceptual issues pertaining to gender also clearly link to the varied definitions of DVA and the diverse use of terminology across disciplines. In particular, there are a range of views on the breadth or limitations of the term âviolence.â Legal perspectives tend to be more familiar with the term âdomestic violence,â which is used to encompass a range of physical and sexual acts of harm, but now also includes behaviours of harassment, sustained non-physical intimidation psychological and emotional abuse. However, for others it implies a reliance on the more tangible evidence of physical or sexual assault, and terms such as domestic, violence and abuse (DVA) and intimate partner violence and abuse are used elsewhere to represent a more nuanced understanding of a broader range of victim/survivor experiences. The usefulness of the term âvictimâ is also contested, with preferences by some for the term âsurvivor,â while others find this equally problematic in terms of imposing a status, whichimplies a level of ongoing vulnerability or recovery. The terms âservice userâ and âservice providersâ reflect the move towards consumerist frameworks for intervention and support, with an emphasis on achieving identified, quantifiable outputs. Similar issues of terminology and definition also arise in work with perpetrators of abuse and in particular the determination of thresholds of seriousness leading to the criminalisation of DVA, as highlighted previously. Arguments may also be made for a greater opportunity for self-determination and definition by those experiencing DVA, although this approach assumes that victims/survivors are a homogenous group who will reach a consensus. Rationales for these and other approaches are ideologically and politically motivated and every variation offered in this collection has its own benefits and limitations. They reflect the conceptualisation of DVA as a criminal or non-criminal matter and the various diverse stages of victim/survivor, perpetrator, or potential perpetrator engagement with mechanisms for protection, prevention and intervention. A matter of some reflection for the reader perhaps is which definitions appear to dominate in the wider public discourse on DVA and which remain more marginalised. It is also vital that the various disciplinary perspectives are willing to explore these conceptual differences and utilise them as an opportunity for refining and improving their own position and approach.
Structure of the Book
The authors provide a critical analysis of their core subjects informed by internal, practitioner-based perspectives, from those currently working in the DVA field with both perpetrators and victims/survivors and external perspectives from independent academic researchers across subject disciplines in law, socio-legal studies, applied social sciences, criminal justice, criminology, sociology, psychology, gender and abuse studies.
Part I
Contributions in Part I of this collection are written from a legal perspective and focus on legal processes and provisions for protection.
In Chap. 2, Ronagh McQuigg sets a broader context for a legal discourse of DVA and in particular the efforts made to secure the recognition of DVA as a human rights violation. With the advent of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (2011), a renewed opportunity has occurred for a human rights approach to inform and strengthen national strategies for the prevention of and protection from DVA. For those less well versed in the overarching legal frameworks to address DVA, an overview is provided of the guidance supplied at both international and European levels. The chapter considers whether developments have extended beyond the symbolic function of a human rights discourse and explores the challenges of implementing and enforcing a human rights perspective to make real changes for victims/survivors of DVA.
The collection then turns to further legal and criminal justice concerns at a national level. In Chap. 3, Mandy Burton considers the enduring challenges of securing effective police responses to DVA in England and Wales. She considers the 2014 report undertaken by Her Majestyâs Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), which highlighted ongoing issues of poor evidence gathering, the persistence of a dismissive police culture towards DVA and a fundamental lack of understanding of the dynamics of DVA by frontline police officers. She considers whether the recently implemented Domestic Violence Protection Notices and Orders provide a positive innovation to assist with the challenges of policing in this area. Alternatively, is this a step towards preventative, diversionary actions by the police and to what extent might this also be seen as a step towards the decriminalisation of DVA?
In Chap. 4, Charlotte Bishop considers the limitations of a legal response and in particular, a perceived âhierarchy of harmsâ where non-physical acts of DVA remain misunderstood and subject to poor legal redress. She highlights that systematic patterns of coercive and controlling behaviour aimed at disempowering the victim/survivor are frequently characterised by specific gendered expectations. However, despite recent legislative developments, the legal system often negates the enduring nature of DVA and the gendered significance of many DVA cases. It is stated that this is due, in part, to the legal systemâs own history as an institution steeped in broader social and cultural conditions of gender inequality. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the law would be a more ...