Growing Strong
Criminalising coercive control is not the answer: An abolitionist critique by Georgia Mantle and Mali Hermans On Thursday 24 September 2020 , Labor MP Anna Watson introduced a private members bill to the New South Wales Parliament to amend the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007. The amendment seeks to criminalise coercive control in domestic relationships. Coercive control refers to the use of controlling and manipulative behaviours including psychological, emotional and financial abuse within domestic relationships. Coercive control is committed to gaining and maintaining control over another person. This bill will make it an offence to engage in coercive control over another person in a domestic relationship. Carrying a maximum penalty of imprisonment for five years and/or a fine of $5,500 and, in cases deemed to be aggravated, a prison sentence of ten years imprisonment and/or a fine of $13,200.
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Anna Watson is not alone in proposing legislation to criminalise coercive control with Green’s MLC Abigail Boyd giving notice for similar legislation in June this year. Women’s Safety NSW, a statewide peak body for women’s specialist services, have said that “criminalisation of coercive control [is] essential if Australia is to achieve a substantial reduction in violence against women and domestic homicide.” While domestic violence services and some advocates have praised the move to criminalise coercive control, criticism of the bill has emerged from prison and police abolitionists, who have labelled the proposed legislation as embedded in ideas of carceral feminism. Carceral feminism refers to a response to gendered violence which calls for increased policing, law reform and harsher prison sentencing for perpetrators. Though originally coined by Elizabeth Berstien in her discussion of sexual labour and calls to criminalise sex work, it has come to refer more broadly to feminists reliance
upon the criminal justice system for safety and protection. Feminist anti-violence movements fought for the social and legal recognition of domestic violence and an increase in punishment for perpetrators of this violence. Historically, the criminal justice system — whether via the police or the courts —saw domestic violence as a discrete and interpersonal family issue. Feminists fought to have the system recognise domestic violence as a political issue that the state needed to address. In doing so, many feminist anti-violence activists failed to recognise the violence rooted in the criminal justice system itself. In her book Decriminalising Domestic Violence, Leigh Goodmark argues that while criminalisation of domestic violence brought tangible benefits to some women, the criminal justice system has failed to prevent intimate partner violence by trying to solve what is fundamentally a social issue without broader investment in social services and infrastructure. A broader community response that incorporates housing, health, economic security and structural change to gender relations and patriarchy is imperative. In failing to recognise the violence inflicted by policing and the prison system, carceral feminism relies on the idea that violence can be prevented or ‘fixed’ through punitive measures, reinforcing and empowering these violent systems. The proposed legislation relies on women being willing and able to involve the police in situations of violence. For many women, involving the police can lead to additional violence, with the police acting as another perpetrator of violence in denying support, inflicting further harm and compounding existing trauma. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait
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