Doctoral Dissertation Research: Domestic Violence at the Crossroads: the interaction of the criminal, civil and child protection responses

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This study examines three separate but interrelated legal processes with which female victims of domestic violence interact on a regular basis, and where they potentially experience a large degree of institutional managing -- the criminal justice system, the civil protection order process and the child welfare system. The research will study how the actions of victims are named and interpreted by those charged with intervening in their cases. Observations will take place in criminal and civil courts, and work sites, and interviews conducted with 30 institutional workers in San Francisco, California. Focus groups with 30 battered women who have been involved with the state will explicate how users of the system understand its functioning. Interviews with 20 nationally based domestic violence advocates will speak to how national policy development informs work that is being done locally. Worker narratives will provide rich data to examine how victim actions are read, and whether these readings change over time or between agencies, and maps that highlight key moments of simultaneous intervention will be developed. These narratives and maps will make it possible to identify contradictions that arise within and between institutional processes and to whom or what blame is affixed when conflicts arise.