RT Article
T1 A qualitative investigation into the impact of domestic abuse on women’s desistance
JF Probation journal
VO 66
IS 4
SP 416
OP 433
A1 Barr, Úna
A2 Christian, Natalie
LA English
YR 2019
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1735500224
AB While criminological literature, criminal justice practice, and to a lesser extent, state policy have acknowledged a link between women’s criminalisation and gendered violence (MoJ, 2018; Österman, 2018; Prison Reform Trust, 2017; Roberts, 2015), there has been much less acknowledgement of the role of historical and contemporaneous experiences of violence in the desistance scripts of criminalised women. Combining findings from two research projects exploring gender and desistance, this article argues that (i) criminalised women’s experiences of gendered violence are such that any exploration of gender and desistance which does not acknowledge this is incomplete, (ii) coercion and control can inform women’s entry into the criminal justice system, (iii) expressions of agency and resistance in abusive interpersonal relationships can also inform women’s offending, yet (iv) women’s experiences of desistance from crime can mask the harm they face in coercive, controlling, and violent relationships. Thus, the article argues for a reframing of desistance from crime as desistance from harm both theoretically and in practice, and considers what this might entail.
K1 Desistance
K1 Domestic violence
K1 Coercive control
K1 Resistance
K1 Agency
K1 Gender
DO 10.1177/0264550519881684