From Truthout:
One of the central tenets of the movement to end intimate partner violence is accountability: the idea that people who use violence should be held responsible for their actions. For many in the movement, accountability has been linked to intervention by the criminal legal system. Some anti-violence advocates have argued that those who used violence could best — or only — be held accountable through prosecution, conviction and incarceration.
But few in the movement have paid attention to what happened after people who used violence were incarcerated. They fail to recognize that prisons offer little programming for those convicted of intimate partner violence and that what programming is offered is often unevaluated or substandard (like much of the “batterer intervention” programming offered outside of prisons). These advocates settled for a passive accountability, believing that simply sitting in a prison cell is sufficient to change behavior or decrease dangerousness.
This hope is undermined by the numerous accounts of people who have been incarcerated repeatedly for intimate partner violence and have increased their use of violence against their partners after being released. The social science data is clear that criminalization is neither decreasing nor deterring intimate partner violence. Prisons are warehouses, keeping people out of society for periods of time during which they are exposed to trauma, trauma that they bring with them back into their communities and relationships. Criminalization exacerbates the correlates of intimate partner violence, including trauma and economic distress. Prison, in and of itself, does nothing to prevent those who have used violence from doing so again, and instead, actually makes it much more likely. Continue reading >>>
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