Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women presents
Mandatory Charging and Women’s Empowerment” with Holly Johnson
Police and courts have an important role to play in the reduction of intimate partner violence through their potential to denounce the violence and provide safety for victims.
Mandatory charging policies are a cornerstone of an aggressive criminal justice response to intimate partner violence, but support for these policies is mixed. In favour are those who see the potential for criminal justice intervention to empower and protect women, validate their experiences, and condemn the violence. Critics warn that mandatory charging can be used against women who use violence defensively and that strengthening the power of a patriarchal justice system fails to restructure gender hierarchies and offers no real empowerment.
An Ontario study examines mandatory charging from the perspectives of abused women, service providers and police. Results show that the policy is unevenly applied and benefits are unevenly felt. Policy built not only for women but with direct input from the women affected must become the rule, not the exception, if the justice system is to live up to its promise of providing safety and security to women abused by intimate partners.
Holly Johnson
Holly Johnson is associate professor in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa. Her research examines women’s experiences of male violence as well as criminal justice and social responses to this violence using a variety of methodologies designed to capture women’s lived experiences. This study is the result of a collaboration with postdoctoral fellow Dr Deborah Conners and violence against women coordinating committees across Ontario.
This event is co-sponsored by Department of Psychology and Department of Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminology at UWindsor and the Violence Against Women Coordinating Committee of Windsor-Essex
