Book Review: Domestic violence as state crime. A feminist framework for challenge and change
| Author | Ester Blay |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20662203221117094 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Farrall S (2021) Politics, research design and the ‘architecture’of criminal careers studies. British
Journal of Criminology 61(6): 1575–1591.
Gibson M (2022) ‘Encounter’(interview with Katrin Jakobsdottir, prime minister of Iceland). New
Statesman 11 February: 12–13.
Haldane A (2021) In Conversation. RSA Journal, Issue 4: 20–23.
Wacquant L (2009) Punishing the Poor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Domestic violence as state crime. A feminist framework for challenge and change. By Evelyn Rose. New
York: Routledge, 2021. 216. ISBN: 9780367676896
Reviewed by: Ester Blay, University of Girona, Girona, Spain
Domestic violence as state crime is presented by its publishers in their webpage as a
‘provocative challenge’to the current understanding of domestic violence and indeed it
works as such.
The book develops the argument that domestic violence should not be understood as an
interpersonal crime by individual men to their female partners, but as a state crime. The
global prevalence of this form of violence can only be explained, according to the author,
because the same state institutions purported to address and prevent it do indeed create,
perpetuate, legitimate and in the worst cases endorse domestic violence. The state is thus a
generator of violence that functions as no mere bystander.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part (chapters 1 and 2) serves as an
introduction, with an overview of the main arguments of the book and, more importantly,
an explanation of the author’s experiences as a survivor of domestic violence and a
discussion of the feminist and ethical principles on which this work is grounded. Here the
author also explains the radical feminist and structural perspectives on domestic violence
and the state, which work as the basic building blocks of her argument.
The second part of the book develops the conceptualization of domestic violence as a
state crime through different lenses. The chapters in this section all are structured in a
similar way: they first contain a theoretical discussion of the specific perspective used in
the chapter, using insights from international law, human rights, state crime and feminist
literature, followed by evidence from various jurisdictions (mainly, Australia, New
Zealand, the US and the UK) to illustrate and support her arguments empirically.
Rose first she shows how domestic violence can be understood as a state crime against
humanity. As a crime against humanity domestic violence produces extreme harm and is
perpetrated in a mass scale in both national and international contexts. This framing helps
us situate specific instances of violence committed by individual men on individual
women in a more systemic and collective context (chapter 3).
Book Review 171
To continue reading
Request your trial