Law Commons^™

Stop The Killing: Potential Courtroom Use Of A Questionnaire That Predicts The Likelihood That A Victim Of Intimate Partner Violence Will Be Murdered By Her Partner, Amanda Hitt, Lynn Mclain

All Faculty Scholarship

Judges in domestic cases often underestimate the risk to a mother and her children that an angry and abusive father or other intimate partner poses. In a recent Maryland case, for example, two judges refused to deny a father visitation or require that visitation be supervised, despite the fact that the father had threatened suicide. During the father’s unsupervised visitation, he drowned all three of his children, then attempted to kill himself.

The Danger Assessment tool (the D.A.) developed by a Johns Hopkins Nursing professor and validated by herself and other social scientists shows how much the father’s thoughts of …

Prisons Must Cease Re-Traumatizing Women: A Call For Gender-Responsive Programs That End The Cycle Of Abuse, Sally Abrahamson

Legal Writing Competition Winners

“They break us out there and then more in here. And they don't do anything to build us back up.” This is a quote from a woman serving thirty-one years for assault and crack-cocaine possession. Like many other incarcerated women, she has a history of being in domestically abusive relationships. Prison, she said, felt like an extension of feeling the same hopelessness she did before entering prison. Using drugs was a means to escape the reality of abuse and poverty. Her time in prison further disempowered her economically and socially, as she received no job-training and lost many of her …

A Shift Toward Gender Equality In Prosecutions: Realizing Legitimate Enforcement Of Crimes Committed Against Women In Municipal And International Criminal Law, Tamara F. Lawson

Articles

A new era of law enforcement has emerged recognizing the importance of punishing gender-specific violence. This first wave of "gender-sensitive prosecutors" has changed the way crimes against women are handled in the criminal justice system. The enactment of gender neutralizing laws and policies has dramatically improved the enforcement of crimes against women and attempts to end the era of impunity. This Article addresses the changes in prosecutions and further considers international human rights treaties that require gender equality in law enforcement.

In criminal law, it is the willingness of a prosecutor to exercise his or her discretionary authority to file …