However, the marginalization of domestic crimes may also be explained as the result of discourses of the normal family, which allow for a certain amount of violence between spouses, and view the physical disciplining of children as an understandable aspect of family life with the defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’ playing a major role in family policy and Acts of parliament since the 1800s. Indeed, “…some form of physical violence in the life cycle of family members is so likely that it can be said to be almost universal …violence is as typical of family relationships as is love.” (Hotaling and Straus, 1980, p. 4, cited in Saraga, 2001).
These discourses also emphasize the privacy of this institution, and as such it must be stressed that statistics concerning the prevalence of violence in the home may underestimate the extent of such occurrences, since victims of domestic violence and child abuse may not consider themselves to have been
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on the receiving end of a ‘crime’. Even if they do they may not be in a position to act upon such violence, given their relative powerlessness within the family.
Another set of discourses that worked to reinforce this view were those propounded by welfare professionals, particularly influential in the post-war years, though still featuring heavily in current policy thinking on child abuse.
Within these discourses, family violence is seen to be the product of individual pathology, and usually seen to occur only in dysfunctional families. In the field of child abuse, welfare discourses, along with discourses of the normal family worked together to ensure that physical abuse was, and indeed in all but the most extreme cases still is, seen as a welfare issue, to be dealt with by the social services rather than within the criminal justice system.
Following the 1948 Children Act, the aim of welfare policy was to keep children within the family wherever possible. Welfare professionals increasingly used the family systems model to explain the causes of familial violence, claiming there were no victims or abusers, but ‘problem families’ (Saraga, 2001). Thus, for example, when the father committed an act of violence upon his child, the mother was also implicated. Violence within the family was seen as a social problem rather than a crime, and as such intervention was based upon support and rehabilitation, through family therapy, rather than punishment of the offender.
However, second-wave feminism, which emerged in the 1960s, contested the dominant welfare discourses and argued that familial violence was the product of structural gender inequalities and an abuse of male power (Segal, L, 1990). Feminists saw domestic violence and child sexual abuse as ‘related phenomena’ (Saraga, 2001). The former was seen as a ‘…tactic or resource associated with attempts to control or dominate women’ (Dobash and Dobash, 1992, p.248, cited in Saraga, 2001), whereas perpetrators of child sexual abuse were seen as calculating, often ‘…planning the abuse carefully…’ (Conte et al., 1989, cited in Saraga, 2001).
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Despite their common ideology, feminists differed in important ways, which were significant for policy interventions. Radical feminists, such as Susan Griffin (1971, cited in Segal, 1991) argued that in patriarchal cultures, the basic elements of rape were present in all heterosexual relationships. Rape was seen as the product of a culture which encouraged men to see sexual activity as a way of ‘conquering’ women, and although not all men commit rape, it serves as ‘a kind of terrorism’, ensuring women’s subordination and dependence (Segal, 1991). This perspective argued that all men were potential rapists.
However, other feminists (for example, Segal, 1991) believed that it should be acknowledged that there is a distinction between men who commit rape and those who do not; only by recognising the differences can we begin to understand and prevent men’s violence towards women. Segal (ibid) argues that there are a number of factors crucial in determining men’s propensity to violence. At the structural level, societies that construct ‘masculinity’ in terms of the assertion of heterosexual power, and which repress sexuality are more likely to tolerate certain levels of violence against women and children. However, individual pathology, environmental factors and social ills, such as poverty and racism, all play a role in determining which men are most likely to perpetrate acts of physical and sexual violence, and also which women are most likely to be its targets.
The welfare approach, which constructed domestic violence in terms of individual pathology, was challenged by feminists, who believed that the ‘victim blaming’ evident in this approach shifted the blame for abuse away from men. This model saw women as somehow responsible due to masochistic tendencies or provocation of the abuse, although there is no conclusive evidence to prove this theory. Also, within the medical model, the therapeutic discourses constructed violence against women and children as a ‘disease’, but as Dobash and Dobash have argued, such views merely transfer “…complex social, cultural and political issues into psychological syndromes.” (1992, p.215, cited in Saraga, 2001).
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The private nature of the family was also challenged by second-wave feminism, with Gordon (1989, cited in Saraga, 2001) asking ‘whose privacy?’ and ‘whose liberties?’ were protected by this discourse. Thus an important objective of the feminist campaigns of the 1970s and the 1980s was to question the privacy inherent in familial ideology, in order to reveal the extent of occurrences of violence within the domestic sphere.
Despite some success in increasing public and political awareness of the problems, both domestic violence and child abuse were still marginalized by the criminal justice system. A 1975 Select Committee on Violence in Marriage recognised that domestic violence was indeed a social problem, but stated that it ought not be treated as a crime. This was a result of both the dominance of welfare discourses, and also based on recommendations of the police to leave responsibility for violence in the home with the social services and counselling agencies (Hamner, 1989, cited in Saraga, 2001).
From the 1970s onwards, the main form of intervention in domestic violence cases was the temporary restraining order. This type of order is obtained via the civil courts, as opposed to the criminal courts, and requires that the perpetrator of violence ceases his behaviour, often forced by his exclusion from the life space of his victim (Merry, 2001). This type of intervention is a form of spatial governamentality, typical of the techniques of governance applied in late modernity, which attempts to maintain social order through the regulation of space, rather than punishment of the offender.
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Despite such mechanisms, feminists still argued that the attitudes of the police and the criminal justice system were failing women, so campaigning continued throughout the 1970s to try and force a cultural change in these institutions. There was a proliferation of research activity in the 1970s and 1980s, termed the ‘knowledge explosion’ (Kelly, 1988, cited in Saraga, 2001), aimed at making crime within the home visible, providing resources, such as women’s refuges, changing public attitudes and obtaining information regarding the extent and nature of the different crimes committed in the domestic arena (Saraga, 2001).
This knowledge explosion succeeded to some degree in all of these objectives, and by 1990s domestic violence had been redefined as a crime, and its gendered nature was widely accepted. The Home Office circulated best practice guidelines to all police services in 1990, which led to changes in police practice and the introduction of specialist Domestic Violence Units throughout the UK. However, some commentators, though encouraged by such changes, claimed that police were still far too discretionary in their response to incidents of domestic violence (Kelly, 1999, cited in Saraga, 2001), and as such continued campaigning for more effective policing (Saraga, 2001).
Nevertheless, both domestic violence and child sexual abuse were taken more seriously than previously. By the 1990s, domestic violence had been redefined as a crime, and by the end of the decade the government had published Living without Fear, a document that set out their strategy for dealing with such crime, stating that ‘Violence against women is a serious crime which this Government is committed to tackling with vigour’ (Home Office and Cabinet Women’s Unit, 1999, cited in Saraga, 2001).
This cultural change was aided by the emergence of human rights discourses, particularly those concerning the rights of women and those of children. Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, there were numerous debates as to the needs and rights of children, and by the end of the century children’s rights
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discourses were informing political rhetoric and policies. However, a government publication Protecting Children, Supporting Parents (DOH, 2000) which framed policy surrounding child abuse, ensured that this form of violence remained the responsibility of the social services, except in very extreme cases. The defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’ persisted, although the criteria for the physical disciplining of children was more explicitly defined. Familial violence against children still tends to be treated as merely one symptom of wider social ills, and is seen as a consequence of multiple family problems. However, human rights and feminist discourses have had marginally greater success in attempting to bring child sexual abuse into the criminal domain.
Domestic violence is now generally accepted as a crime, and has been made more visible with various initiatives and research projects over the last three decades. However, many women still do not consider acts of violence committed against them by their partner or former partner as a ‘crime’ – in the 1996 BCS, only 17 % stated that they believed it to be so, and these were more likely to be victims of chronic abuse. Those who believed themselves to victims of domestic violence felt that the criminal justice system had no part to play in their experience (Mirrlees-Black, 1999). In turn, this has an effect on reporting rates, compounded by the attitudes of the police and other criminal justice agencies, which because they too are imbued with the values of society hold the same perceptions about violent incidences in the home.
The power of the ideology of the family appears such that changing attitudes and perceptions among policy makers, criminal justice agencies and the public is indeed proving to be a long and slow process. There have been numerous initiatives throughout the 1990s aimed at increasing awareness of familial crime, and resources have indeed increased during this time. However, the government would need to inaugurate a massive cultural shift in order to tackle such crimes, but if it were to be successful then one major aspect of the crime problem would be addressed, with far-reaching consequences for the lives of many women and children.
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References
Merry, S.E. (2001) ‘Spatial governmentality and the new urban social order: Controlling gender violence through law’ in McLaughlin, E., Muncie, J. and Hughes, G. (2003) (eds.) Criminological Perspectives, London, Sage.
Mirrlees-Black, C. (1999)
Accessed 28/03/04
Muncie, J. (2001) ‘The Construction and Deconstruction of Crime’ in Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (eds) The Problem of Crime, London, Sage/The Open University
NSPCC (2003) http://www.nspcc.org.uk/html/home/newsandcampaigns/factsandfigures.html
Accessed 27/03/04
Saraga, E. (2001) ‘Dangerous Places: The family as a Site of Crime’ in Muncie, J. and McLaughlin, E. (eds) The Problem of Crime, London, Sage/The Open University
Segal, L. (1990) ‘Explaining male violence’ in McLaughlin, E., Muncie, J. and Hughes, G. (2003) (eds.) Criminological Perspectives, London, Sage.
