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‘Criminalizing’ Women
Criminalizing happens when women experience male violence, but they are the ones treated like the criminals. The woman is made to feel like she is to blame for situations that occur as a result of violence; situations like: poverty, homelessness, public damage to reputations, immigration status problems, child exposure to violence, damage to property and so on. Women can also be criminalized by the policies and actions of child protection services, the police, the courts and the government. Some examples of how women are criminalized are listed below. Child Protection Services: Women feel that they are treated like child abusers when they are accused of ‘failure to protect’. This can occur because the mother is experiencing abuse from the partner and she is held responsible for the child witnessing abuse or being impacted by abuse in the home. In these circumstances, women risk having their children apprehended by child protection services and/or having criminal charges laid against them. Recent child welfare case research for Ontario shows that in almost one-quarter of reports of “domestic violence” to child welfare agencies, women were charged with “failure to protect”. Alternatively, women can be accused of neglect or ‘failure to provide’. This can occur when a mother leaves an abuser with her children and as a result experiences greater poverty or homelessness and is then held responsible for the impacts of poverty on her children. In these cases women are also at risk of having their children apprehended by child protection services and/or having charges laid against them. These are “no-win” situations for women and their children. Some young women with children have been ordered to get police checks for every male that enters their home because they have experienced prior abuse from their partner or family members. Women who live with disabilities, Deaf women, young women, Aboriginal women and poor women are more likely to be rated higher risk on the eligibility spectrum for child abuse - simply because of who they are, not because of their particular ability or non-ability to parent. As a result they face higher scrutiny, higher levels of parental interference and higher risk of losing their children. Police: Women in Ontario are criminalized through “dual” charging practices and “sole” charging of women in “domestics”. Dual charging means both people are charged with committing a crime (usually assault). Women who have experienced verbal, sexual, physical and financial abuse from their partners, often for years, have been arrested and charged when they have used force to defend themselves. Force includes: hitting, shoving and throwing objects. Police will say that it wasn’t clear who was the perpetrator of violence and arrest both adults; at other times the woman is the only one who will be arrested because her partner has a visible injury, many times from an object used in defense, or because the arresting officer decides that her partner is ‘more credible’ when he lies and says she has abused him. This situation is so serious that the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services has created a guide for police officers to help them reduce the increasing numbers of dual charges in domestics. The tool has helped to reduce the numbers of dual charges, but the rate of “sole” charging of women is now rising in Ontario. Women who work in the sex trade, who experience physical and sexual assault from their clients, risk criminal charges because their work is criminalized. These laws leave many women vulnerable to abuse with little or no options for protection. Women without immigration status are reluctant to call the police when they are assaulted by their partners because of their fear of being reported to immigration by the police. This leaves non-status women in very vulnerable positions for abuse and exploitation. Aboriginal women are reluctant to call police because of their history of either not being believed or supported by police and/or incidences of violence perpetrated by police officers themselves against Aboriginal women. Young women under 18 years of age have been charged with prostitution related offenses, instead of police using sexual exploitation laws to charge procurers and pimps. Deaf women are reluctant to contact police because of the difficulty in communication with police, lack of police understanding of Deaf culture and a history of their community being abused by police. Courts: Women who have been sexually assaulted are still made to feel at fault for engaging in common activities redefined by lawyers, media and the courts as ‘provocative’ or somehow having caused the assault. For example: drinking or taking drugs, wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes, being alone with a man, accepting a ride home, being out at night, going to a party, flirting and so on. Young women often face charges of breach of probation when they run away from unsafe and abusive homes or group homes they’ve been ordered to live in. Or charged with assault when reacting to physical restraints in group homes Social Assistance Programs: Women may be charged with fraud by Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program if their abusive partner gives them money (designed to trap them into a fraud situation) and women have been cut off social assistance because their abusive partners called the “snitch line” and falsely accused them of fraud. In a more subtle way, criminalizing occurs because certain actions get labeled as fraudulent in Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) policies. For example: Ontario Works rates are barely (and in some cases completely not) enough to live on. If OW recipients receive gifts of money or groceries from family or friends and do not report them to their Ontario Works contact,, OW policy states that the recipient is committing fraud. Survivors of violence have compared treatment by Ontario Works as the same as partner abuse—unpredictable and threatening—and have described being “treated like a criminal”. Communities that want to end violence against women must address these systemic barriers that keep women from escaping violence in their lives. Women’s options are limited and restricted. They feel threatened by their partners and they are skeptical and wary of the help that is offered to them through community systems. For all of the reasons listed above, criminalizing policies and practices only reinforce women’s ideas about government and systemic lack of support. It reinforces the message that women don’t matter. Some facts: - The fastest growing population of persons incarcerated in Canada is women. The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies recently reported: “Women incarcerated in Canada have increased by 200% over the last decade and that of the 200 % the highest percentage represent Aboriginal women, women of colour and women with mental and cognitive disabilities”.
- There is an increase in the numbers of young women involved in the criminal justice system. It is Aboriginal and First Nation’s youth who are disproportionately jailed.
- For the eight to nine most common offences tracked in Canada, youth serve longer sentences than adults. In addition, Canada jails youth at four times the rate of adults. Canada jails youth at five to seven times the rate of most US cities and 15-20 times the rate of most European countries. Women’s victimization is a direct pathway to their involvement in the criminal justice system.
- As funding continues to decrease for women’s equality seeking organizations, there is an increase in women being sentenced to longer periods of incarceration in “hopes of access to treatment”. This is linked directly to the fact that prisons are the only institutions that can’t refuse service provision.
- Women without immigration status can be arrested and held in jail-like detention centres while awaiting the outcome of their hearing. This can take as long as two years.
- The backlash against women’s equality and anti-violence work has resulted in the adoption of gender neutral policies and practices that have in turn allowed for the increase of criminal charges against abused women.
‘Psychiatrizing’ Women “Psychiatrizing” or “medicalizing” happens when men are violent to women, but women are treated as though they have emotional, medical or psychiatric conditions—or even just ‘flaws’ in their personalities—that contributed to or ‘provoked’ the violence and abuse. Women are often directed to get therapy, psychiatric treatment or “life-skills” and “assertiveness” training in order to end the violence in their lives. We know that it is unlikely that men would receive the same advice. Many women in Ontario are inaccurately diagnosed with a “mental illness” such as: bipolar disorder, clinical depression, panic/anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, dissociative disorders, etc. These diagnoses are often based on “behaviours” that women are exhibiting as a result of abuse, often behaviours women actively engage in to survive the impacts of abuse. Once diagnosed with a “mental illness,” women are stigmatized and treated as though they have something wrong with them that needs to be fixed, most often through medication. The focus is on treating and curing their coping strategies – instead of focusing on ending the violence. The mental health system is often used a weapon of control by abusers. Women are threatened that if they “tell” about the abuse, no one will believe them, they will be called ‘crazy’, they will lose their children, etc. This is an effective weapon to maintain control over victims because it happens! Some abusers have had their partners institutionalized for “being suicidal,” making them less credible witnesses in cases where they might come forward. Women who have received a diagnosis of ‘mentally ill’ are highly scrutinized, infantilized and judged by social service agencies and child protection services, so that services for them become highly monitored with very strict rules of compliance. Funding for grassroots services for women—services that provide information about abuse, advocacy, safety planning, crisis support and the like are being eroded in favour of mental health and criminal justice services. Women who are labeled with a mental health diagnosis experience homelessness, joblessness and poverty at higher rates than non-labeled women; leaving them extremely vulnerable to further incidences of violence and abuse. There is no question that violence and abuse impact women’s health and well-being in a number of ways, however most women who experience violence and abuse are not mentally ill. They are survivors of violence and as such their primary needs are to be able to access resources, receive support from the community and an end to the violence, not medication and clinical treatment. Violence against women will be addressed when we as a society address the situations that enable violence to occur and flourish; situations like: racism, sexism, poverty, imperialism, commodification of individuals and responses that manage the effects of these oppressions rather than tackle the causes. Some facts: - Gender bias occurs in the treatment of psychological disorders. Doctors are more likely to diagnose depression in women compared with men, even when they have similar scores on standardized measures of depression or present with identical symptoms.
- Female gender is a significant predictor of being prescribed mood altering psychotropic drugs.
- Violence related mental health problems are also poorly identified. Women are reluctant to disclose a history of violent victimization unless physicians ask about it directly.
- Women across all age ranges experience significantly higher hospitalization rates for mood disorders and several other mental health diagnoses than men.
More resources: Women Charged with Domestic Violence in Toronto: The Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Charge Policies. Woman Abuse Council of Toronto (WACT), 2005 Walking on Eggshells: Abused Women’s Experiences of Ontario’s Welfare System (2004) Welfare Fraud: The Constitution of Social Assistance as Crime. Janet Mosher, York University and Professor Joe Hermer, University of Toronto, 2005. Implications of the Shrinking Space for Feminist Anti-Violence Advocacy. Mandy Bonisteel and Linda Green, 2005. US National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Battered and Formerly Battered Women's Caucus Statement, July 14, 2004. No Status, No Service-No More September-October, 2004, This Magazine Maria Amuchastegui World Health Organization: Gender and Women’s Health A Report on Mental Illnesses in Canada, 2002, Mood Disorders Society of Canada Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work, Bonnie Burstow, University of Toronto. Violence Against Women, Vol. 9. No. 11, 1293-1317 (2003). Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Campaign Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Society (for links to local EFS as well) Ontario Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies The Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System: Project: Waiting for Mommy Also sourced: Australian Symposium- Women and Crime, Summer 1996 Kim Pate, ED, Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Society |
