The Criminalisation of Coercive Control: The Power of Law?

Abstract

Making sense of intimate partner violence has long been seen through the lens of coercive control. However, despite the longstanding presence of this concept, it is only in recent years that efforts have been made to recognise coercive control within the legal context. This article examines the extent to which the law per se has the power, or indeed the capacity, to respond to what is known about coercive control. To do so, it charts the varied ways in which coercive control has entered legal discourse in different jurisdictions and maps these efforts onto what is evidenced about the nature and extent of coercive control in everyday life. This article then places the legal and the everyday side by side and considers the unintended consequences of ‘coercive control creep’. In conclusion, it is suggested that the criminalisation of coercive control only serves to fail those it is intended to protect.

Navigating the Family Law Provisions: Migrant Women’s Voices

“…It is widely accepted that it can involve physical, psychological, sexual, or material and economic abuse between former or current partners irrespective of whether the perpetrator shares or has shared the same residence with the victim (Douglas, Harris and Dragiewicz 2019;Voolma 2018). Research in the area continuously points to a scenario of male perpetrators and female victims (Walby et al 2017) with ongoing elements of coercive control from the part of the abuser (Stark 2010;Walby and Towers 2018;Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon 2019).…”

Why Criminalise Coercive Control? The Complicity of the Criminal Law in Punishing Women Through Furthering the Power of the State

“…Second, there are difficulties in evidencing the extent to which criminalisation achieves improved safety outcomes for women (especially women who are particularly marginalised from the criminal justice process) and the extent to which this strategy might contribute to perpetrator accountability. These issues have been discussed elsewhere in terms of understanding the tensions between the presence of coercive control in everyday life and what that might mean when placed within a criminal justice context (Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon 2019). Interestingly, the debate surrounding coercive control and its criminalisation is, in many ways, a surface manifestation of a deeper problem that has plagued those committed to changing legal responses to violence against women since the 1970s.…”

“…Some jurisdictions have recognised coercive control as an adjunct to other offences, and some have considered it an appropriate space in which to use expert witnesses. Others have introduced specific criminal offences of coercive control (these different developments are summarised in Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon 2019). More recently, there have been attempts to incorporate an understanding of coercive control as a mitigating defence for murder.…”

“…The purpose of this article is to situate recent moves to criminalise coercive control within the historical trajectory of the criminalisation of violence against women more generally and to explore its unintended consequences. Crucially, it delves deeper into the unintended consequences of coercive control creep as explicated by Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon (2019). For this in-depth analysis, the article is divided into four parts.…”

Criminalisation and the Violence(s) of the State: Criminalising Men, Punishing Women

“…However, the impact of the push towards criminalisation has not been as linear as first envisaged. In some cases, those who fought for the criminal law to better recognise violence against women have recently driven the conversation towards rethinking the efficacy of justice system responses for women who experience men's violence (on recent dissenting voices within the criminalisation debate, see, inter alia, Goodmark, 2018;Walklate and Fitz-Gibbon 2019). It is to this debate and the rapidly evolving conversation that encourages a move away from the reliance on law that we now turn.…”