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Empowering victim-survivors has long been recognised as one key strategy in reducing domestic abuse. This article explores whether Domestic Violence Disclosure Schemes as a criminal justice response to preventing domestic abuse in the United Kingdom are experienced as empowering in practice. Centralising victim-survivor voices, this article argues that variability in experiences of feeling empowered or disempowered pivoted upon whether those who deliver the scheme adopted an incident or process focussed approach. It concludes that while such schemes can be empowering when concomitant support is forthcoming, ultimately the victim-survivors in this study were left feeling disillusioned because of the disparities between what was expected and the limits of what was delivered in practice.

The 2021 Domestic Abuse Act puts the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (Clare’s Law) on a statutory footing which allows police forces to share someone’s criminal history to prevent domestic abuse. In this article, we draw on the findings from a wider study on women’s experiences of accessing such schemes and instead highlight the informal ways in which women shared and received information about domestic abuse experiences among each other to prevent domestic abuse. These experiences are located within a ‘red flag’ discourse which we argue inadvertently responsibilises women, who in turn blame themselves for failing to leave abusive relationships. The conclusion makes some suggestions as to how a better understanding of the reality of victim-survivors’ everyday lives might inform the practices of those tasked with supporting women in making sense of disclosures of domestic abuse and providing appropriate support at the right time.

This article presents empirical findings from a British Academy funded project concerned to explore victim-survivor experiences of domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) in the UK. In so doing it draws on the concept of responsibilisation as one way of making sense of the experiences reported. It goes on to suggest a note of caution for the development of these schemes in other jurisdictions, since the failure to take account of victim-survivor voices in relation to DVDS in the UK has contributed to such schemes rendering victim-survivors responsible.

Historically states have failed to seriously confront violence against women. In response, in many countries women's rights movements have called on the government to prioritize state intervention in cases involving violence between intimate partners, sexual harassment, rape, and sexual assault by both strangers and intimate partners. Those interventions have taken various forms, including the passage of substantive civil and criminal laws governing intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault, and sexual harassment; the development of civil orders of protection; and the introduction of procedures in the criminal legal system to ensure the effective intervention of police and prosecutors. Indeed, many countries have relied upon intervention by the criminal legal system to meet their requirements under international human rights standards that obligate states to prevent, protect from, prosecute, punish, and provide redress for violence. Although states have taken divergent approaches to the passage and implementation of criminal laws and procedures to address violence against women, two things are clear: criminalization is a primary strategy relied upon by most nations, and yet criminalization is not having the desired impact. This collection explores the extent to which nations have adopted criminal legal reforms to address violence against women, the consequences associated with the implementation of those laws and policies, and who bears those consequences most heavily. The chapters examine the need for both more and less criminalization, ask whether we should think differently about criminalization, and explore the tensions that emerge when criminal law, civil law and social policy speak or fail to speak to each other. Drawing on criminalization approaches and recent debates from across the globe, this collection provides a comparative approach to assess the scope, impact of, and alternatives to criminalization in the response to violence against women., https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/books/1142/thumbnail.jpg

This book offers a critical appreciation of the nature and impact of coercive control in interpersonal relationships. It examines what this concept means, who is impacted by the behaviours it captures, and how academics, policy-makers and policy advocates have responded to the increasing recognition of the deleterious effects that coercive control has on especially women’s lives. The books discussed the historical emergence of this concept, who its main proponents have been, and how its effects have been understood. It considers the role of coercive control in making sense of women’s pathway into crime as well as their experiences of it as victims. Coercive control has been presented predominantly as a gendered process and consideration is given in this book to the efficacy of this assumption as well as the extent to which the concept makes sense for a wide constituency of marginalised women. In recent years, much energy has been given to efforts to criminalise coercive control and the concerns that these efforts generate are discussed in detail, alongside what the limitations to such initiatives might be. In conclusion the book situates the rising pre-occupation with coercive control within the broader concerns with policy transfer, ways of taking account of victim-survivor voices, alongside the importance of working towards more holistic policy responses to violence(s) against women. The book will be of particular interest to academics, policy-makers and practitioners working in criminal justice who wish to both understand the nature and extent of coercive control, as well the importance of appreciating the role of nuance in translating that understanding into practice.

This chapter explores victims in historical contexts, considering how they have been conceptualised and represented in selected twentieth-century criminal trials. It focuses in particular on those who have diverged from 'ideal victimhood', a framework proposed by criminologist, Nils Christie. Based on evidence drawn from The Times newspaper reports of Old Bailey trials between the 1950s and 1970s, the chapter explores the representation of complainants who were less readily attributed the legitimate status of 'victim'. Victims have been little studied by historians and so this research provides new insights into how historical victims were dealt with by the court and contemporary media.