a. Gender equality and crime:
Domestic Violence and Stalking Behavior.
While the
literature on domestic violence has long delved into both physical and non
physical spousal and partner abuse, in most North American jurisdictions
criminal law dealing with spouses and partners living together has
traditionally focused mainly on physical –including sexual- violence. Many
North American jurisdictions still do not criminalize harassment, control, and isolation
tactics that take place while partners cohabit. These behaviors are
nonetheless criminalized the moment the victims –generally female- leave their
abusive partners. This research project analyzes the existing and potentially
desirable criminal justice responses to non physical or sexual domestic
violence in the states of California, New York, Florida, and in Canada. The
project focuses particularly on domestic violence stalking. Domestic violence
stalkers, a category borrowed from Criminology literature, resort to a series
of conducts to abuse their partners, which differ from those employed by these
abusers once their relationship is terminated –known as simple obsession
stalkers. Criminal laws do not specifically protect victims –particularly female-
from the abuse of this class of stalkers in Canada or in the United States.
This project is inserted within a larger debate about the role of the criminal
justice system in domestic violence.
b. Sexual offenses: Time for a new paradigm.
In the past thirty years, the rape law reform movement has
profoundly changed rape and other sexual abuse criminal offenses. However,
these reforms have failed to produce a substantial change in the way the
Criminal Justice systems treat victims of sexual assault, and it has failed to
deter the commission of rape.
The purpose of this research program is to analyze the product
of this reform movement in Canada, some US states –New York, Florida, and
California- and selected Latin American jurisdictions. Both in North America
and in Latin America these reforms are the product of a Crime Control agenda
and pressure from feminist groups, which failed to produce an adequate response
to rape and to foster gender equality in sexual relations.
The pivotal hypothesis of this research project is that despite
the importance of these reforms, they do not adequately offer a solution to the
prevention and treatment of sexual abuse, particularly male sexual abuse
against women. The research project will conclude by offering some suggestions
for a much needed new wave of sex assault reform agenda.
This research
project is framed within Feminist Criminology’s and Feminist Jurisprudence’s
views on the way Criminal Law deals with sex offenses.