Domestic violence is a sensitive issue that continues to be faced with a lot of contrivances. This kind of oppression, especially faced by women, continues to be an ongoing practice even with the much effort that the law enforcement authority has put in the war against it. Historically, domestic violence used to be a family issue that could be held private without the victims coming out to seek help. During the ’60s to the ’90s, husbands used to batter their wives, and it became a normal practice accepted by society. It was okay for a man to beat a woman in marriage, as this was considered to be just like any other family issue. However, the current society takes domestic violence an unfair practice that can be met with massive consequences. The practice is currently a criminal offense that is punishable by incarceration. The criminalization of domestic violence resulted from the feminist rebels who advocated for such kind of abuses to be protected under the law.
Theory 1
Theory 1 is structural stress, and it is classified under the family violence theory, and it is the way people adopt or respond to structural stress. This kind of condition occurs due to distinct behavior that can be traced to an individual’s pathology. Domestic violence was a practice that had been widely accepted, and it resulted from social forces where, for instance, the kind of violence that was commonly inflicted on women and children resulted from psychological conditions, which include socialization experience and structural stress (Houston, 2014). This theory means that a husband can become violent to his wife or children in the event when he fails to provide for his family or lacks a job. The amount of stress caused by such scenarios most often leads to the man being violent. The theory highlights that the more stress a man can be exposed to, the higher the chances of being violent to his family. When one partner interferes with the other partners’ chance to punish children or verbally criticizes the other partner or brings up past arguments, such practices are as well the cause of conflict in the family.
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Theory 2
Theory two is the battered women’s theory, which is undermined because women went back to their abusive partners. A variety of reasons caused women to return to abusive partners because most of them lacked resources to cater to their lives. The theory can be better described in two theories. The first theory is the psychological theory of learned helplessness and the cycle theory of violence. The theory outlines the main reason for a woman going back to an abusive partner as she is unable to help herself (learned helplessness) (Houston,2014). Women who became abused severally ended up coming in terms with the fact that they could not control the abuse. The cycle of violence theory was the other theory with three stages: Tension building, Acute Battering, and Loving Contrition (Houston, 2014). The stages relate to the friction within relationships that could cause violence, mostly heated arguments. After the violent situation, the victim becomes remorseful to the abuser’s actions and is most likely to apologize even though they have been abused.
Feminist Theories’ Response to Earlier Domestic Violence Theories
Feminist theory responded to the domestic violence theory with the argument that the psychology of the women who were victims of the violence was the reason behind society not holding the victims responsible for domestic violence, which were men. The theories were rejected because domestic violence had been made to be a private family affair, which was the reason behind its spread without any consideration of the victims. The feminist theory emphasized that people focus more on dysfunctional relationships as the main cause of domestic violence. Privatizing domestic violence only meant that the law enforcement authorities, including the judiciary, had been kept off family issues, which encouraged domestic abuse to go on (Houston, 2014).
Theory 1
The first theory works on the assumption that victims of domestic violence enjoy the act. The fact that the issue has been considered a family affair prevents law enforcement authorities from helping the victims. The feminists urged that domestic violence could be encouraged because the victims were made to blame, which is not right. Feminists responded to this y claiming that blaming victims only encouraged domestic violence to become more rampant. Additionally, putting mutual blame on the offender and the offended could only take the blame away from the abuser. This was the main feminist critique of domestic violence. Women were found to be just as violent as men and could also become the abusers at some point (Houston, 2014). The violence inflicted on men in their homesteads was just at the same rate as the violent men. According to Houston 2014, it was quite impossible to tell who was the first to hit the other to determine the party acting in self-defense. The mutual violence theory was just a way to put off the feminists from advocating for the courts to protect women as it was meant to blame the victim for violence.
Theory 2
The next theory is the one that describes domestic violence as a family affair. The fact that domestic violence was something that was accepted in the family made it impossible for the law to protect the victims. Feminists urged that with the fact that psychological theory prevented the victims from getting justice by relating domestic violence to psychological disorders in women, this prevented domestic violence from getting out of the family setting to the public and hence encouraged it to continue (Houston, 2014). It was wrong to consider domestic violence as a normal family that prevented the intervention of the courts.
Impact of Feminist Theories on Criminal Intervention
Bruno v. Codd
In this case, the plaintiff complained about the law failing to offer protection to the wives who were battered by the husbands. The case raised more awareness on domestic violence as it highlighted the unwillingness of the police to intervene in domestic violence matters.” the risk of liability for the failure to arrest in an incident of intimate partner violence exposed states and municipal governments, along with individual officers, to the harsh realities of the informal response.” aabri.com,2014. The plaintiff urged in the case that domestic violence was supposed to be taken with the same seriousness as other crimes and called for action against the New York City police department. In their argument, the plaintiff termed domestic violence a serious crime whose victims should get legal protection from the law.
Scott v. Hart
There was a need to strengthen the criminal justice system to intervene in violent domestic matters. The abusers should be made to compensate the victims. Such exceptions were meant to increase the offenders’ arrest, but the police had instead agreed to a policy that did not involve arresting the offenders (Houston, 2014). A mandatory duty was imposed in the police to arrest a husband who was found with a reasonable cause to indicate that they were violent to their wives. The state passes domestic violence legislation, which changes the protective order for warrantless arrests for the perpetrators (Gee, 1983) .
References
Aabri.com (2014) Dual arrest in domestic violence investigations: a patrol officer Perspective. https://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/141976.pdf
Gee, P. W. (1983). Ensuring police protection for battered women: the Scott v. Hart Suit. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 8 (3), 554-567.
Houston (2014) How Feminist Theory Became (Criminal) Law: Tracing the Path to Mandatory Criminal Intervention in Domestic Violence Cases. https://search-proquest-com.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/central/docview/1648955875?accountid=34544
