Domestic violence in Brazil: social problems and legislative interventions

Recent statistical data confirms that domestic violence is a structural problem of exceptional gravity. We analyze the frequent legislative changes in Brazil since 2000 as a result of social pressure for protection of abused women. Only the Law 11.340 of 2006 was well received by lawyers, judges and the public opinion. We present the innovations and peculiarities of this statute and the allegations on unconstitutionality. We discuss cases of judicial review of this law and reject the arguments of unconstitutionality. That notwithstanding, we argue that penalization decisions is the wrong way from a criminological point of view because they do not take into consideration the desires and needs of the victims.

Giving up reporting the aggressor: reports of female victims of domestic violence

The goal of this study is to describe the experience of female victims of domestic violence, who forfeited the lawsuits against their aggressors. The interviews were oriented by the question: What was your experience of forfeiting the denunciation of your aggressor? Three themes emerged from the convergence of the testimonies: time passed from the aggression to the denunciation and then to the forfeiting; the partner, the family, the women's precinct; reflecting about the experience, which described the studied phenomenon. The women expressed ambiguous feelings for their aggressor: affection, anger, humiliation and fear. They recognize that they are dominated and humiliated, but notions of justice and equality between spouses do not appear in the testimonies. Forfeiting can be understood in the context of the reproduction of the traditional family structure, conditioned to economic and social factors. Results highlight implications about the role of the Women's Precinct and the healthcare institutions in the care for women who were victims of domestic violence.

How domestic violence came to be viewed as a public issue and policy object

Includes bibliography

An evaluative study of the implementation of domestic violence legislation: Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitss

Includes bibliography

Domestic Violence

Since the 1960s, there has been growing awareness regarding the issue of domestic violence as a form of violence against women, which has been largely influenced by the work of feminist activist and scholars in North America and Europe (Dobash and Dobash 1992). Other terms have been used to describe the same phenomenon, including domestic abuse, spousal abuse, wife battering, marital violence, intimate partner violence. Though there is no doubt that this problem has existed for much more than five decades, the tendency to label it as ‘private matters’ or ‘marital disagreements’ has obscured the reality of women living with abuse in their home. At a general level, domestic violence can be defined as the means used by a man in order to assert his control and domination over his intimate partner, whether they are married or not (Mullender 1996). It can involve incidents of physical and sexual violence, as well as verbal, psychological and financial abuse. Though some of its manifestations may be associated with particular cultural or religious groups – e.g. forced marriage and honour killing in South-Asian communities – domestic violence affects women from all classes and backgrounds.

Domestic violence services and prevention program fiscal year ... annual report /

"Public act 82-645 mandates the Department of Public Aid to administer domestic violence shelter and service programs for adults and their dependents who are victims of domestic violence."

Night terrors:Women's experiences of (Not) sleeping where there is domestic violence

The management of sleep is embedded within the social context of individuals' lives. This article is based on an exploratory study using focus groups of the sleep problems encountered by 17 women survivors of domestic violence. It argues that fear becomes the organizing framework for the management of sleep and illustrates how this takes place both while living with the perpetrators of violence and after the women have been rehoused. It argues that sleep deprivation is a method used by the perpetrators to exert control over women and that this has long-term implications for women's physical and mental health. © 2007 Sage Publication.

Domestic violence in the urban fringe

Police call data for domestic violence incidents in the city of Brisbane were used to further explore the locational disadvantage thesis. it was hypothesised that the supposed additional burdens and stresses on disadvantaged families living in the outer suburbs may be reflected in significantly higher rates of reported domestic violence. Using an index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage and employing Analysis of variance (ANOVA) this research shows that significantly higher rates of reported domestic violence occur in the inner suburbs relative to the middle or outer suburbs of Brisbane. This finding adds further doubt to the magnitude of locational disadvantage impacts on outer suburban low income family households.

From domestic violence to sustainable employment

International research has found that domestic violence is a significant barrier to accessing and sustaining work (Lloyd and Taluc 1999, 385; Browne et al. 1999, 398). In the Australian context, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reports that between 6 and 9 per cent of Australian women aged 18 and over are physically assaulted each year and that more than half of all women in Australia experience sexual or physical violence across their adult lifetime. Such behaviour has been estimated to cost $8.1 billion, of which $4.4 billion is estimated to be borne by the victims themselves, $1.2 billion by the general community and smaller amounts by friends and family and various levels of government (Access Economics 2004). This assessment underestimates the costs of domestic violence in terms of the inability of those who have experienced domestic violence to move into and secure sustainable employment options. Despite these statistics there is a dearth of Australian research focussing on the link between domestic violence and its impact on long-term sustainable employment for those who have been subjected to such violence. This paper explores the issue of domestic violence and access to work opportunities. In so doing, it links the work of Gianakos (1999) and her Career Development theory with that of Bandura‘s (1989) Social Cognitive Career Theory to develop a framework which would provide a pathway to enable those who have suffered domestic violence to achieve sustainable employment and economic independence.

Child welfare policy and practice on children’s exposure to domestic violence

There are emerging movements in several countries to improve policy and practice to protect children from exposure to domestic violence. These movements have resulted in the collection of new data on EDV and the design and implementation of new child welfare policies and practices. To assist with the development of child welfare practice, this article summarizes current knowledge on the prevalence of EDV, and on child welfare services policies and practices that may hold promise for reducing the frequency and impact of EDV on children. We focus on Australia, Canada, and the United States, as these countries share a similar socio-legal context, a long history of enacting and expanding legislation about reporting of maltreatment, debates regarding the application of reporting laws to EDV, and new child welfare practices that show promise for responding more effectively to EDV.

Theorizing Police Response to Domestic Violence in Singapore: Police Subculture Revisited

This article focuses on the well documented, yet potentially contested concept of rank-and-file policesubculture to conceptualize policeresponse to situations of domesticviolence in Singapore. It argues that the utility of the concept to explaining police behavior is often undermined by an all-powerful, homogenous, and deterministic conception of it that fails to take into account the value of agency in police decision-making and the range of differentiated policeresponse in situations of domesticviolence. Through reviewing the literature on policeresponse to domesticviolence, this study called for the need to rework the concept of policesubculture by treating it as having a relationship with, and response to, the structural conditions of policing, while retaining a conception of the active role played by street-level officers in instituting a situational practice. Using Pierre Bourdieu's relational concepts of ‘habitus’ and ‘field,’ designating the cultural dispositions of policesubculture and structural conditions of policing respectively, the study attempted to reconceptualize the problem of policing domesticviolence with reference to the Singaporean context.