Decriminalizing Domestic Violence

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2025, from 12:15-1:45pm

Location: The Interchurch Center, 61 Claremont Avenue (Entrance between 119th & 120th Street)

Series: Patriarchal Violence

Speaker: Leigh Goodmark (University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law)

Respondent: Eleanor Johnson (Columbia University)

Abstract: For more than forty years, criminalization has been the primary approach to addressing intimate partner violence in the United States. Intent on ensuring that intimate partner violence was treated like any other crime, anti-violence feminists campaigned for stronger enforcement of the criminal law against those accused of violence. Bolstered by billions of dollars in federal funding, states have enacted laws and policies mandating arrest and prosecution in cases involving domestic violence and increasing sentences for crimes of violence. But criminalization has not decreased or deterred intimate partner violence. Instead, criminalization exacerbates the correlates of intimate partner violence and has serious consequences for the people that it was meant to help. This talk will argue that we should shift our policy responses to intimate partner violence away from criminalization and instead look at the problem through the lenses of economics, public health, and community intervention.

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