C) CROWN

Light, Linda & Shelley Rivkin. "Power, Control, and Violence in Family Relationships: A Criminal Justice Response." In Stopping the Violence: Changing Families, Changing Futures, ed. Mary Russell, Jill Hightower & Gloria Gutman. Vancouver, BC: BC Institute on Family Violence, 1996.

This study, conducted in cooperation with the UBC School of Social Work, explores the experiences of women whose partners were convicted of assault under the "no-drop" policy directive set out in the provincial government's Violence Against Women in Relationships policy. The study attempts to: (1) identify the short-comings in of the criminal justice system's responses to victims' needs, and (2) evaluate whether the approach taken by the Violence Against Women in Relationships policy can be considered a feminist one. The researchers interviewed a sample of eight women in order to gather information about how battered women are treated by the justice system, their perceptions and understandings of the role of the criminal justice system in ending the violence in women's lives, and the type(s) of support that would be most helpful in encouraging women to stay involved in the legal proceedings. The data pertaining to the women's experiences were analyzed according to the following components: accessing support, validating feelings and empowerment versus powerlessness.

The results of the study, and the ensuing discussion, have clear implications for Crown counsel's encounters with battered women. The findings could easily be transformed into a protocol that addresses women's needs to be treated respectfully and as partners in the process, to be kept informed of the status of the legal proceedings, to have the rules, procedures, and limitations of the court system explained to them. This study will be of interest to professionals in the criminal justice system, researchers, and legal advocates for battered women.

Based on the data of an earlier study entitled, Violence and Intimidation Against Women in Relationships (1994) this study provides an examination of fifty-four wife assault cases found to have been stayed in court during January and June of 1994. It was found that a substantial number of cases are stayed because of women's reluctance to testify in court.These particular cases were then examined to determine the reasons why the women did not want to testify against their spouses in court. In analysing the fifty-four cases, thirty-one were found to have resulted solely from the women's refusal to testify. The results of the study suggest that women are often pressured or intimidated by their abusers or other family members not to testify. The authors conclude that women will not feel safe testifying until they have full confidence in the criminal justice system's ability to protect them from further assaults. The information contained in this report will be useful to those working in the criminal justice system with women who have been assaulted.

MacLeod uses anecdotal material drawn from interviews with twenty Crown attorneys -- eight of whom were from Ontario and the remaining twelve from other towns and cities across Canada -- in order to examine their assessment of the impact of the mandatory charging, no drop prosecutorial policies in violence against women in relationship (VAWIR) cases The focus of the paper is the experiences, perceptions and concerns expressed by Crowns about how they are being asked to respond to VAWIR cases.

There was concern that feminists were using the issue of woman abuse in relationships for their own political purposes and in so doing were increasing the length of time it took to prosecute in these cases, meanwhile ignoring the needs of abused women (which in their perception, is quick action to enable them to get on with their lives). Others expressed concern that "special interest groups" were demanding changes that infringed on Crown discretion and questioned their ability to decide what actions are appropriate in any particular case. Crown also spoke of the "misconception" that all wife assault cases should be treated as equally serious. This, Crown argued, may allow what they see as rare but truly serious cases to "fall between the cracks because they never even get to the justice system." Other areas of concern raised by Crown were taking away women's choices and letting "strangers" decide what is "best for them," and the increase in the number of wife assault cases clogging up the courts, cases they feel shouldn't be there in the first place. The difficulties these policies posed for Crown in carrying out their daily work included: having to deal with "reluctant witnesses" which Crown felt were the norm in VAWIR cases; judges who refused to hear the cases that they prepared because they didn't view them as serious; increased time in case preparation and problems in successfully prosecuting these cases because they believed that the burden around reasonable doubt had grown heavier; having to deal with the general societal perception that women who are abused are unreliable and liars; and the lack of resources necessary to deal with the increased work load. Solutions offered by Crown to the problems raised by these policies include: better training on the dynamics of abusive relationships to enable them to identify high-risk cases; expedient processing of these high risk cases; less stringent policy guidelines which would allow more options in dealing with VAWIR cases; involvement of victim/survivors in the solution by asking them what they think would be a satisfactory disposition of the case; and ensuring that both victims and abusers are provided with advocates. MacLeod lets the anecdotal evidence speak for itself with no analytic conclusions, suggesting only that the issues raised by these accounts deserve further research. Her point is well-taken.