Defining Justice: Restorative and Retributive Justice Goals Among Intimate Partner Violence Survivors.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are drivers of women's morbidity and mortality yet remain among the most underreported crimes in the United States. Understanding IPV/SV survivors' justice preferences and justice definitions can strengthen violence prevention and response systems. In-depth interviews were conducted with women who experienced past-year IPV (n = 26), to explore their justice preferences and recommendations. Primary themes included accountability, safety, and rehabilitation, with examples within and outside the current justice system, and across restorative and retributive justice frameworks. Women sought accountability through a variety of means. Retributive approaches like incarceration offered accountability as well as fleeting safety, but were critically limited in addressing the root causes of violence and, in some cases, were felt to exacerbate the problem. Women's expressed needs and preferences centered on restorative aspects of justice, including perpetrator's acknowledgment of harm, achieving physical safety and stability, and perpetrator rehabilitation through counseling. Paradoxically, women's safety-related justice goals both encouraged and discouraged their engagement in the formal justice system. The discordance between women's justice preferences and their perceptions and experiences within the current justice system illustrate complex and difficult trade-offs faced by survivors in achieving physical, social, and economic safety. Moreover, they likely contribute to the low levels of IPV/SV reporting to police. Women's goals were aligned with restorative justice principles, illustrating the value of this approach. In an era of unprecedented dialogue on justice reform, results provide direction for integrating restorative justice practices to strengthen the justice response to violence against women.

"You Do Not Think of Me as a Human Being": Race and Gender Inequities Intersect to Discourage Police Reporting of Violence against Women.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) are drivers of women's morbidity and mortality in urban environments yet remain among the most underreported crimes in the USA. We conducted 26 in-depth interviews with women who experienced past-year IPV or SV, to explore structural and community influences on police contact in Baltimore, MD. Results indicate that gender-based and race-based inequities intersected at the structural and community levels to discourage women from police contact following IPV/SV. Structural influences on police reporting included police discriminatory police misconduct, perceived lack of concern for citizens, power disparities, fear of harm from police, and IPV/SV-related minimization and victim-blaming. Community social norms of police avoidance discouraged police contact, enforced by stringent sanctions. The intersectional lens contextualizes a unique paradox for Black women: the fear of unjust harm to their partners through an overzealous and racially motivated police response and the simultaneous sense of futility in a justice system that may not sufficiently prioritize IPV/SV. This study draws attention to structural race and gender inequities in the urban public safety environment that shape IPV/SV outcomes. Race-based inequity undermines women's safety and access to justice and pits women's safety against community priorities of averting police contact and disproportionate incarceration. A social determinants framework is valuable for understanding access to justice for IPV/SV. Enhancing access to justice for IPV/SV requires overcoming deeply entrenched racial discrimination in the justice sector, and historical minimization of violence against women.

The experience of sexual assault: findings from a statewide victim needs assessment.

A statewide assessment was conducted of assaults, experiences, needs, and recommendations of 125 adult victims receiving care at 19 sexual assault centers (SACs) in the State of Maryland. More than one half of the victims (55.6%) waited years before disclosing, with delays in reporting especially likely if the assault was perpetrated by a family member (the most frequent perpetrators at 42.4% of respondents). About one half of the victims (51.3%) had been previously sexually assaulted, yet only 9% of these victims had sought treatment. The majority of respondents (69.4%) indicated they would not be filing charges against perpetrators, and of those who did, 46.2% reported dissatisfaction with the interview with police. Psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety were the most common reasons for seeking care at the centers. Nearly all of respondents rated the care they received at the centers as very good or excellent. Respondents recommended more SACs, better advertising of their services, more mental health care within them (especially group therapy), and improved laws and law enforcement of perpetrators.