Russell Dobash

Separate and Intersecting Realities: A Comparison of Men's and Women's Accounts of Violence Against Women

The authors seek to contribute to a fuller understanding of mens violence against women in intimate relationships by comparing mens and womens accounts of the violence, injuries, and controlling behavior used by men against women partners. Although men and women inhabit a shared physical and social space within the home, their lived experiences and perceptions of such relationships often differ. Despite this, many studies do not consider what effect such gender differences might have on accounts of violence against women and, instead, assume that mens and womens accounts are basically unproblematic. The authors ask whether this is so. Based on findings from an in-depth interview study of 122 men who had perpetrated violence against a woman partner and 144 women who had been the victims of such violence, the results show that women and men provide significantly different accounts of mens violence, controlling behavior, and injuries. These results make problematic the assumption that mens accounts of their own violent behavior can be used uncritically and without reference to womens accounts of mens violence.

Not an Ordinary Killer— Just an Ordinary Guy When Men Murder an Intimate Woman Partner

The Murder in Britain Study was designed to examine in detail different types of murder. Using a subset of case files from this study, men who murder other men (MM;n = 424) are compared with men who murder an intimate partner (IP;n = 106) to reflect on the relative conventionality of each group. In terms of many of the characteristics of childhood and adulthood, the IP murder group differs from theMMgroup and appears to be more “ordinary” or “conventional.” However, the IP group is less conventional in that they are more likely to have intimate relationships that had broken down, to have used violence against a previous woman partner as well as against the victim they killed, and to “ specialize” in violence against women.

Lethal and Nonlethal Violence Against an Intimate Female Partner Comparing Male Murderers to Nonlethal Abusers

Mens lethal and nonlethal violence against an intimate female partner are compared. Various risk factors are examined to compare mens lethal and nonlethal violence against an intimate woman partner. Relative to abusers, men who kill are generally more conventional with respect to childhood backgrounds, education, employment, and criminal careers, are more likely to be possessive and jealous, and are more likely to be separated from their partner at the time of the event. Men who kill are more likely to have used violence against a previous partner, to have sexually assaulted and strangled the victim, and to have used a weapon or instrument. However, they were less likely to have been drunk at the time of the event and/or to have previously used violence against the woman they killed. Overall, the findings do not support the notion of a simple progression from nonlethal to lethal violence and raise some dilemmas for the growing area of risk assessment.

Evaluating Criminal Justice Interventions for Domestic Violence

In this article, the authors consider various approaches to the evaluation of criminal justice interventions in the area of domestic violence. Evaluations have been conducted on a range of interventions, but this article focuses particularly on evaluations of arrest and programs for violent abusers. The authors contrast randomized designs used in the primarily North American studies of arrest with the extant evaluations of abuser programs and argue for the use of more theoretically informed contextual evaluations of criminal justice interventions. Using their own 3-year evaluation study of two Scottish abuser programs, the authors demonstrate how the contextual approach is attuned to both outcome and process and results in more empirically informed assessments of how change is achieved in the behavior and orientations of violent men. The authors argue that evaluations of criminal justice-based interventions should be designed to fit the phenomena under consideration as well as the intervention itself.

A Research Evaluation of British Programmes for Violent Men

In the last two decades there have been a number of social, medical and legal initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to provide assistance to women who suffer violence from their partner. The most recent innovations focus on responding to the men who perpetrate this violence. In this article we present the initial results of the first British study of programmes for violent men. The three-year study used a longitudinal method to compare the effects of two court mandated programmes with other, more orthodox, forms of criminal justice intervention (fines, admonishment, traditional probation, prison). Here we describe the mens programmes, locate the current study in the context of existing evaluations of similar programmes operating in North America, outline the methods employed, present the results of the post-hoc matching used to assess the probable effects of selection bias and using subsequent prosecutions and the accounts of women, compare the impact of different criminal justice interventions. The results indicate that twelve months after the criminal justice intervention a significant proportion of the Programme men had not subsequently been violent to their partner. This was in contrast to men sanctioned in other ways (the Other CJ group) who were much less likely to have changed their violent behaviour.

What Were They Thinking? Men Who Murder an Intimate Partner:

The focus is on cognitions of men who murder an intimate partner and includes thinking prior to and after the murder. Based on the Murder in Britain Study, the qualitativ e accounts of v arious professionals included in the casefiles of 104 men conv icted of murdering a woman partner are used to examine beliefs about intimate relationships, orientations toward v iolence and prev ious v iolence to the v ictim, as well as subsequent denials, rationalizations, and justifications. We conclude that these and other cognitions are important elements of intimate partner murder and must be challenged and changed in efforts to eliminate nonlethal abuse and murder.

Protection, Prevention, Rehabilitation or Justice? Women's Use of the Law to Challenge Domestic Violence*:

This article addresses the neglected question of what women who experience ‘domestic violence’ want from the law and examines the ways in which women actively engage with the legal system. Viewing women as agents trying to survive abuse, we examine their interaction with both civil and criminal legal systems as part of their ‘active negotiation and strategic resistance’ to mens violence. This represents a break from the tradition which has tended to view women survivors as passive recipients of the law and has focused on outcomes of legal intervention to the exclusion of process. Using data from a British evaluation of criminal justice responses to domestic violence, we analyse legal processes which support or fail to support women and argue that legal interventions can contribute to womens improved safety and quality of life.

“Out of the Blue” Men Who Murder an Intimate Partner

It came “out of the blue” is often said when a man with no known history of criminality kills his intimate partner. This reflects a belief that a “conventional man” without a criminogenic past or a problematic personal history would not commit murder. Casefiles from the Murder in Britain Study are used to compare men with no previous conviction (NoConvict, n = 25) with men with at least one previous conviction prior to the murder (PrevConvict, n = 79). The groups differed in childhood and adulthood with problematic lives and offending among the PrevConvict group and more “conventional” profiles among the NoConvict group but were similar in terms of circumstances at the murder and cognitions about the victim, especially possessiveness, jealousy, separation, empathy and remorse. The similarities challenge the notion that the murder comes “out of the blue” and underscore the relevance of gender and a feminist analysis of IPmurder

Programmes for Violent Men: Recent Developments in the UK

The results are presented of a telephone survey of British therapeutic and educational programmes specifically for men who are violent towards women partners. The following issues are considered: the organisational status of projects, funding, systems of referral, resistance to the creation of programmes, relationship with womens refuge organisations and theoretical and ideological orientations. The findings suggest some resistance has been experienced, most importantly from probation officers and womens groups. The programmes are predominantly cognitive-behavioural in orientation and around half of all projects take men as part of a court order. The significance of these findings is discussed in the light of the recent encouraging evaluation of two pro-feminist and cognitive-behavioural criminal justice programmes.

Onset of Offending and Life Course Among Men Convicted of Murder

Although the developmental perspective has become a leading paradigm in criminology, little attention has been paid to the onset of offending and life course of murderers within this tradition. We use bivariate and Multiple Correspondence Analysis to investigate the life course and criminal careers of three onset groups among a UK sample of 786 men convicted of murder. The early-onset group (20% of the sample) is more likely to have experienced significant problems in childhood and adulthood. The no-offending group (10% of the sample) is the least likely to have had problematic backgrounds. The childhoods of the late-onset group (67% of the sample) resemble the no-offending group (with few problems) but in adulthood they more closely resemble the early-onset group (with many problems). The implications of these findings for developmental criminology and homicide research are discussed.