Criminal justice system responses to intimate partner violence: The Italian case
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| Author | Stefania Crocitti,Davide Arcidiacono |
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895815586271 |
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2015, Vol. 15(5) 613 –632
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895815586271
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Criminal justice system
responses to intimate partner
violence: The Italian case
Davide Arcidiacono
Catholic University of Milan, Italy
Stefania Crocitti
University of Bologna, Italy
Abstract
This article presents the results of research carried out in two Italian cities, aimed at analysing
the criminal justice system’s response to intimate partner violence. Research data were collected
through the content analysis of judicial files concerning offences involving violence against women
by a partner or a former partner. From the research, it appears that the Italian penal system tends
to selectively de-construct and fragment the acts of violence, rather than to re-construct the facts
as they actually took place. In criminal proceedings, the centrality of the woman’s cooperation
is unquestionable. However, the ineffective response by the penal agencies could represent an
instance of ‘circular causation’ linked to the so-called ‘trained inability’ of penal actors. In order
to deal adequately with these issues, specific training is required for criminal justice system
practitioners. It also seems necessary to resort to specific tools for risk assessment, in order to
ensure the protection of the victim.
Keywords
Criminal justice system, intimate partner violence, Italy, risk assessment, violence against
women
Introduction
Violence against women is a controversial topic in the international scenario and even
more in Italy, where the Istanbul Convention on domestic violence, signed by the Council
of Europe in 2011, was ratified only recently (May 2013). Intimate partner violence
Corresponding author:
Stefania Crocitti, University of Bologna, School of Law, Via Zamboni 22, Bologna, Italy.
Email: stefania.crocitti@unibo.it
586271CRJ0010.1177/1748895815586271Arcidiacono and CrocittiCriminology & Criminal Justice
research-article2015
Article
614 Criminology & Criminal Justice 15(5)
(IPV) exhibits specific features which are ‘embedded’ in the private socio-relational
environment and are connected to the social construction of gender. According to Dobash
and Dobash (1979), women are the suitable victims of domestic violence also because
the family tends to be seen as a ‘free zone’ from state intervention, and subject to the
authority of the pater familias. Thus, the impunity of IPV crimes would be due not only
to the absence of norms, but also to inadequate enforcement of the laws (Collins, 1971;
Gelles, 1972; Goode, 1971). The difficulties women encounter in obtaining justice may
depend on their expectations when they face the criminal justice system (CJS), its organ-
ization (Eriksson et al., 2005), internal culture (Hearn and Parkin, 2001) and selectivity
(Maguire et al., 2007; Morris, 2010). Furthermore, the CJS responses depend on the
victims’ behaviour, the perceptions penal actors have about them and the roles and capa-
bilities of support agencies (Creazzo, 2010; Dobash and Dobash, 1992; Richie, 2000).
The CJS officers dealing with IPV seem to behave on the basis of what has famously
been defined as ‘trained inability’ (Merton, 1968: 407): the condition in which ‘profes-
sional skills act as obstacles or difficulties’ in achieving a result, because ‘actions, based
on training and technical skills, which in the past had given a positive result, can produce
inappropriate responses under changing conditions’. Each officer is trained in proce-
dures whose validity relies upon a stable and homogeneous reality, but when changes
occur and new problems arise, the whole apparatus of techniques, habits and actions is
put in crisis. This organizational rigidity (Vaughan, 1999; Winter, 2011), typical of all
modern bureaucracies, becomes resilient to external stimuli and is difficult to be bal-
anced with the IPV victims’ needs. A cognitive blindness (Bifulco and De Leonardis,
2002) may result, with important effects on the efficacy of anti-violence networks, since
the social actors, who intervene on IPV – also in extralegal spaces and even before the
violence occurs – are left ‘disarmed’. A bureaucratic model of action does not allow
professionals (e.g. policemen or emergency room assistants), during the first contact
with the victims, to build suitable levels of trust between the victims and the institutions,
nor does it provide the awareness required to prosecute violent behaviour successfully.
The prevailing organizational model has a direct impact on the CJS responses to IPV.
Indeed, an institutional projection of the features that a victim of such a crime should
possess can be derived from the descriptive capability of penal actors dealing with a
violent incident, from the depth and thoroughness of the investigations, from the meas-
ures chosen to safeguard the victim and from the construction and consolidation of a
priori categorizations of the ‘ideal victim’ (Christie, 1986; Rigakos, 1997; Smolej, 2010).
This situation implies a greater effort on the part of women to affirm themselves as per-
sons, making their exit path from violence difficult and potentially ruinous. For these
reasons, the analysis of the relationship between the victim and the CJS is an issue that
deserves to be deepened.
In Italy, the interactions between the CJS and victims of IPV have been largely over-
looked by socio-criminological sciences. Victimization surveys and research on domes-
tic and sexual violence show that, in the few cases in which a woman who suffered
violence reports her (former) partner to the police, the response of the CJS is inadequate
(Creazzo and Bianchi, 2009; Istat, 2008; Romito, 1999). In order to analyse the function-
ing and the responses of the CJS to IPV crimes, taking also into account the interactions
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