Please re-phrase this section to one page answer
A Turnitin report must be attached to the answer!
Please use current research resources. Culture must be included in your discussion when relevant. You may use the link provided, but you are also encouraged to use other cultural resources, citing the source of your information. Your response to each question should be approx. 1-page per question. The entire assignment must be 4-6 pages total plus a title and reference page
1. Why where domestic courts created? Can a family court be effective as a domestic violence court?
2. Discuss the brief history of anti-stalking statutes.
Please re-phrase this section to one page answer!
In many ways the sudden enactment of anti-stalking statutes in the 1990s mirrored the rapid rise of domestic violence laws in the late 1970s to the 1980s. Before 1990, no state had explicit anti-stalking legislation. Instead, statutes generally addressed “criminal trespass” and “terrorist threats” and were very specific requiring a particular pattern of criminal behavior. Hence, they were only occasionally used for domestic violence situations.
Common harassment statutes, of the type on the books in virtually all states, considered stalking-type behaviors to be low-level misdemeanors. Such omnibus statutes were really designed to curtail offensive physical contact, insults, false reports, and other relatively petty offenses. Harassment laws, which were general in nature, also were severely limited in application by numerous judicial decisions that had held that unless “fighting words”—epitaphs, outrageous slurs, or other speech not generally protected by the First Amendment—were involved, and such laws might be unconstitutional. As such, they also did not prove useful in combating stalking related to domestic violence or other serious predatory behavior.
Similarly, although many local jurisdictions had separable anti-stalking ordinances, such efforts were scattered, could be circumvented if the victim or offender left the jurisdiction, and provided for minimal enforcement or punishment. In this regard, the criminal code for stalking situations largely paralleled the frustrations of policing domestic violence. Prior to the passage of domestic violence legislation, police were stymied in that typically no actionable crime was committed before a violent assault.
The nation’s first statewide anti-stalking statute was enacted in California in 1990. This statute was passed largely as a response to the stalking and subsequent July 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who starred on the television show My Sister Sam. In addition, five murders the year before had taken place in Orange County, California, where the victims had actually obtained domestic violence restraining orders and had reported to authorities that the restraining order did not work.
The California statute originally defined stalking in a narrow explicit manner (California Penal Code, 1992, section 646.9). A stalker is someone who “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person and who makes a credible threat with the intent to place that person in fear of death or great bodily injury.” By its terms, the statute required concurrent findings of the following elements: willful malice, repetitive following or harassing, a credible threat, and intent to place the recipient in reasonable fear of death or great bodily injury.
This statute was obviously limited in that it required finding both behavior and intent, leaving its application severely constrained, in particular because an overt threat and proof of intent to cause fear of the threat were required. In addition, it did not provide for warrantless arrests, increasing penalties for violating a court order, nor for conviction in subsequent offenses. It also had less than adequate provisions for victims of domestic violence–related stalking in which the incidents might individually seem trivial (such as repeatedly going into the same stores right after the victim entered). In an effort to respond to such criticisms, California revised its stalking statute in 1992 to increase the grounds allowed and to increase the attendant penalty for violation.
During the next several years, increasing (although largely anecdotal) evidence of a rise in stalking in most states led to the recognition of obvious statutory gaps. There ensued a virtual deluge of new statutes. For example, unusually tough legislation (potentially imposing up to 4 years in prison for aggravated stalking) passed in Illinois. Why did this pass? In hearings prior to passage, lawmakers were told that stalkers had killed five victims in Illinois in the past year; most offenders were husbands or boyfriends who had been removed from their residences, then stalked and killed their former intimates. In addition, victims of domestic violence–related stalking in what is now a familiar pattern recounted to the legislature how they were terrorized even after the newly issued restraining orders were imposed and how they continued to receive harassing mail and calls even after the attacker was incarcerated.
Subsequent anti-stalking laws have become extraordinarily varied in both their terms and level of enforcement. Specific provisions of such statutes now typically include the following general prohibitions:
· pursuing or following,
· harassing,
· nonconsensual communications,
· surveillance or lying in wait,
· trespassing, approaching, or continued presence,
· disregard of warnings (to leave), and
· intimidation.
3. Explain the purpose of a restorative justice approach for domestic violence incidents.
Please re-phrase this section to one page answer!
Restorative justice in cases of domestic violence encompasses a wide variety of informal strategies intended to meet the needs of victims, offenders, and communities alike. Its strength is its potential for better reaching the large percentage of victims of domestic violence who do not call the police. The current approach of arresting offenders and criminalizing domestic violence may actually serve as a deterrent to many victims who fear the consequences of an arrest. As a result, despite the vast increase in domestic violence arrests, a very large number of victims still do not call for police assistance. Regardless of the relative merit of criminal justice versus informal methods of handling such cases, the traumas and specialized needs of these victims, will never be brought to public attention unless there are viable non-traditional techniques.
Restorative justice seeks to expand available options for victims and the community while maintaining a measure of offender accountability. This differs from the criminal justice system’s focus on the offender and criminalizing behavior.
In the context of the criminal justice system, the needs and expectations of the victim often are of only ancillary interest to the main players in a criminal case—the police, prosecutors, defense bar, and court. Victim advocates long have argued that, in the past and currently, the victims have not been well represented in formal criminal justice proceedings (Goodman & Epstein, 2008; Sokoloff & Pratt, 2005). Even in courts with a well-funded victim advocacy program, advocates typically are retained by prosecutors’ offices and, as a result, have the goal of ensuring the victim’s cooperation even when it is against her express wishes (Labriola, Bradley, O’Sullivan, Rempel, & Moore, 2009).
Restorative justice tries to address these victim-centered needs and originates out of a long-standing desire to develop viable alternatives to the criminal-justice system. The key concept is to draw the victim into the resolution of an incident, have the offender truly understand the degree to which he or she has violated the rights of the victim and or the community, and finally to have the offender participate in some effort that will remediate the harm caused and lessen the possibility of the antisocial action reoccurring.
A variety of different means has been used. Although methods of restorative justice differ, they share the following traits:
1. A primary goal is to repair the harm done to the victim (and often the community).
2. A forum is provided to give the victim a chance to address to the offender and the community the impact of the offense.
3. The organizers demonstrate a desire to decrease the official role of the state while increasing the involvement of the families and the community.
4. The proponents might be as concerned with the community impact of violence as they are with the punishment of a particular offender.
4. What is family group conferencing? What advantages does community involvement have over private mediation?
Please re-phrase this section to one page answer!
The most common methods include court-sponsored mediation but not mandated or victim–offender reconciliation or dialogue efforts; family group counseling, also called “community conferencing”; and the “peacemaking circle,” which we will mention briefly. These efforts began in the 1980s in an effort to provide a nonpunitive response to crimes committed by juveniles. These approaches have been adopted widely for juvenile offenders in many international jurisdictions, especially in Europe, and also are used as part of traditional approaches to achieve justice among Native Americans. One study reported that more than 1,200 such programs had been developed worldwide (primarily for youthful offenses; Ptacek & Frederick, 2009). Another study noted that while these alternative programs were relatively common for juvenile offenders in the United States, they are far more common in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and India (Braithwaite, 2006).
Studies of the effects of restorative justice models in the original target population of juvenile offenders have been positive (see Ptacek & Frederick, 2009, for an extended discussion). However, there is a lack of research examining the application of such techniques to cases of domestic violence and the application of techniques of restorative justice to domestic violence has been controversial. In response to the demands of battered women advocates, many jurisdictions effectively ban such techniques in domestic violence cases out of concern that they might be inappropriately used in practice as a mechanism to shield criminal behavior from the purview of the courts that would punish actual crimes (Daly & Stubbs, 2007). Nevertheless, several methods of restorative justice, such as family group counseling and peacemaking circles, have been used in some contexts in the area of domestic violence, and the techniques are still being taught (see especially Nixon, Burford, Quinn, & Edelbaum, 2005, and Ptacek & Frederick, 2009).
We will cover mediation as a method of restorative justice in the most detail, as in the past it was the de facto standard alternative to criminal case prosecution, and by far the most has been written about this area. While there is extensive research on the role of divorce mediation in cases involving intimate partner violence, much of the literature involves theoretical arguments for and against mediation in these contexts. The complexity of the issue and the legitimacy of arguments on both sides lead to calling divorce mediation in the context of domestic violence “one of the most controversial issues in family law today” (Holtzworth-Munroe, 2011, p. 120).
5. What are the various forms of sexual coercion? What are the risks associated with domestic violence and female pregnancy?
Please re-phrase this section to one page answer!
Sexual assault in abusive relationships is typically part of a pattern of sexual coercion. Twenty-five to 30% of women who obtained protection orders reported that they had been subjected to a wide range of sexual abuse, exploitation, and assault (Logan & Cole, 2011). The most commonly reported forms of sexual coercion are sexual inspection; forced pregnancy (sometimes involving denial or sabotage of birth control); coerced sex with children, other family members, or strangers; sex trafficking; the use of pornography; and what may be termed “rape as routine,” where women comply because they are afraid. In a study of men in a batterer intervention program, 33% of those who sexually assaulted their female partners did so when the women were asleep (Bergen & Bukovec, 2006). Male abuse victims also report sexual coercion by male and female partners, though in far smaller numbers than women (Black et al., 2011).
Whether or not sexual coercion consists of criminal acts, its co-occurrence with domestic violence is significantly more traumatic than either violence or sexual assault alone and provides the context for a range of physical and mental health complaints (Richie, 1996). The shame associated with sexual coercion can be a formidable barrier to disclosure and even if acknowledged at an initial interview (e.g., in response to questions such as “Has anyone made you do something of which you are ashamed?”) need not be explored until trust is established. The battered rape victim may feel uncomfortable with aspects of stranger rape hospital protocols that involve eliciting support from significant others or may approach the rape trauma apart from the larger context of coercion and control.
A Turnitin report must be attached to the answer!
Please use current research
resources.
Culture must be included in your discussion
when relevant. You may use the link provided, but you are also encouraged to use other
cultural resources, citing the
source of your information.
Your response to each
question should be approx. 1
–
page per question. The entire assignment must be 4
–
6
pages total plus a title and reference page
1. Why where domestic courts created? Can a family court be effective as a
domestic violence court?
2. Discuss the brie
f history of anti
–
stalking statutes.
Please re
–
phrase this section to one
page answer!
In many ways the sudden enactment of
anti
–
stalking
statutes
in the 1990s mirrored the
rapid rise of domestic violence laws in the late 1970s to
the 1980s. Before 1990, no state
had explicit
anti
–
stalking
legislation. Instead,
statutes
generally addressed “criminal
trespass” and “terrorist threats” and were very specific requiring a particular pattern of
criminal behavior. Hence, they were only occ
asionally used for domestic violence
situations.
Common harassment statutes, of the type on the books in virtually all states, considered
stalking
–
type behaviors to be low
–
level misdemeanors. Such omnibus statutes were really
designed to curtail offensive
physical contact, insults, false reports, and other relatively
petty offenses. Harassment laws, which were general in nature, also were severely limited
in application by numerous judicial decisions that had held that unless “fighting
words”
—
epitaphs, outr
ageous slurs, or other speech not generally protected by the First
Amendment
—
were involved, and such laws might be unconstitutional. As such, they also
did not prove useful in combating stalking related to domestic violence or other serious
predatory behav
ior.
Similarly, although many local jurisdictions had separable anti
–
stalking ordinances, such
efforts were scattered, could be circumvented if the victim or offender left the
jurisdiction, and provided for minimal enforcement or punishment. In this regard
, the
criminal code for stalking situations largely paralleled the frustrations of policing
domestic violence. Prior to the passage of domestic violence legislation, police were
stymied in that typically no actionable crime was committed before a violent a
ssault.
The nation’s first statewide anti
–
stalking statute was enacted in California in 1990. This
statute was passed largely as a response to the stalking and subsequent July 1989 murder
of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who starred on the television show
My
Sister Sam.
In
addition, five murders the year before had taken place in Orange County, California,
A Turnitin report must be attached to the answer!
Please use current research resources. Culture must be included in your discussion
when relevant. You may use the link provided, but you are also encouraged to use other
cultural resources, citing the source of your information. Your response to each
question should be approx. 1-page per question. The entire assignment must be 4-6
pages total plus a title and reference page
1. Why where domestic courts created? Can a family court be effective as a
domestic violence court?
2. Discuss the brief history of anti-stalking statutes.
Please re-phrase this section to one page answer!
In many ways the sudden enactment of anti-stalking statutes in the 1990s mirrored the
rapid rise of domestic violence laws in the late 1970s to the 1980s. Before 1990, no state
had explicit anti-stalking legislation. Instead, statutes generally addressed “criminal
trespass” and “terrorist threats” and were very specific requiring a particular pattern of
criminal behavior. Hence, they were only occasionally used for domestic violence
situations.
Common harassment statutes, of the type on the books in virtually all states, considered
stalking-type behaviors to be low-level misdemeanors. Such omnibus statutes were really
designed to curtail offensive physical contact, insults, false reports, and other relatively
petty offenses. Harassment laws, which were general in nature, also were severely limited
in application by numerous judicial decisions that had held that unless “fighting
words”—epitaphs, outrageous slurs, or other speech not generally protected by the First
Amendment—were involved, and such laws might be unconstitutional. As such, they also
did not prove useful in combating stalking related to domestic violence or other serious
predatory behavior.
Similarly, although many local jurisdictions had separable anti-stalking ordinances, such
efforts were scattered, could be circumvented if the victim or offender left the
jurisdiction, and provided for minimal enforcement or punishment. In this regard, the
criminal code for stalking situations largely paralleled the frustrations of policing
domestic violence. Prior to the passage of domestic violence legislation, police were
stymied in that typically no actionable crime was committed before a violent assault.
The nation’s first statewide anti-stalking statute was enacted in California in 1990. This
statute was passed largely as a response to the stalking and subsequent July 1989 murder
of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who starred on the television show My Sister Sam. In
addition, five murders the year before had taken place in Orange County, California,
