Defending ‘Co‐offending’ Women: Recognising Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control in ‘Joint Enterprise' Cases Involving Women and their Intimate Partners
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | SUSIE HULLEY |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12445 |
The Howard Journal Vol60 No 4. December 2021 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12445
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 580–603
Defending ‘Co-offending’ Women:
Recognising Domestic Abuse and
Coercive Control in ‘Joint Enterprise’
Cases Involving Women and their
Intimate Partners
SUSIE HULLEY
Senior Research Associate, University of Cambridge
Abstract: T he role of coercive control in women’s offending has been increasingly recog-
nised in law.Yet, there remainsa significant blind spot that leads to grossly unfair outcomes
for women who are implicated in cases of serious violence with their abusive partners. This
article outlines the role that abusive relationships play in women being ‘associated’ with
an offence, being present at the scene and unable to withdraw and being implicated in the
police investigation. It argues that such relationships must be recognised in legal practice
and in the law, to avoid serious miscarriages of justice being enacted upon women who
have already been repeatedly failed by the State.
Keywords: coercive control; co-offending; domestic abuse; joint enterprise;
women
[The general public] probably think that justice was served, … [that] we’re both
disgusting, horrific people, so we both should rot in prison, because again that’s
the perception that they have of the situation. … I was like a little puppet to him, if
he said ‘jump’ I’d say ‘how high?’. If he [told] me to sit there quietly and do nothing,
I would sit there quietly and do nothing, which I think for him was just a sense of
control more than anything. (Rosie, convicted of manslaughter, co-defendant with
partner)
For decades the ‘gendered pathways’ literature has identified domestic
abuse as key to women’s routes into offending, alongside other ‘struc-
tural, institutional and familial injustices and disadvantages’ (Barlow 2019,
p.29), such as drug use and childhood abuse and neglect (see, for exam-
ple, Daly 1992; Simpson, Yahner and Dugan 2008). However, in the past
few years the role of coercive control in women’s offending has become
580
C
2021 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League
and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which per-
mits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The Howard Journal Vol60 No 4. December 2021
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 580–603
more widely recognised, after having been introduced as an offence in En-
glish and Welsh law in Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 (Barlow
and Walklate 2021). In this context, coercive control refers to a pattern of
behaviours that aim to ‘subordinate’ a person or make them ‘dependent’,
for example ‘by isolating them from sources of support’, as well as ‘acts of
assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to
harm, punish, or frighten their victim’ (Home Office 2015, p.4). The rele-
vance of coercive control to women’s offending has recently received par-
ticular public attention, in the wake of the high-profile case of Sally Challen
whose 2011 conviction for the murder of her husband was overturned in
2019 (Rv. Challen [2019] EWCA Crim 916). Although the coercive con-
trol that Challen had experienced at the hands of her husband did not
provide a defence for murder (rather she accepted a plea of manslaughter
on the basis of diminished responsibility (Justice for Women 2017; Thorne
2019)), her legal team emphasised the impact of the coercive behaviour
on Challen, which gained a great deal of publicity (see Walklate and Fitz-
Gibbon 2019).
Meanwhile, over the last few years the Domestic Abuse Bill has been
rumbling through the political system. The resultant Domestic Abuse Act
2021 (passed in April 2021) places new emphasis on the ‘emotional, co-
ercive or controlling, and economic abuse’ that blights the lives of many
victims and survivors of domestic abuse (Home Office 2021). While the Act
has been welcomed for raising the profile of forms of abuse that fall out-
side the domestic violence archetype, in which ‘“violence” means “physical
assault”’ (Hunter 2006, p.751; see also Welle and Falkin2000), the govern-
ment rejected submissions to include statutory defences that protect from
prosecution individuals who are compelled to offend because they are vic-
tims of domestic abuse. This is despite the legal parity that this would create
with the survivors of human trafficking (based on Section 45 of the Modern
Slavery Act 2015) (see Prison Reform Trust (2020) for full details).
Notwithstanding the recent legal developments to recognise coercive
control and the drive by third sector organisations to reduce the culpa-
bility of women implicated in offences where the experience of coercive
control is directly relevant, there remains a significant blind spot in the le-
gal system and in much academic work. That is, women who are implicated
in violent offences committed by their abusive partner, who are drawn in
as secondary parties using complicity liability (commonly known as ‘joint
enterprise’). In practice, this is women who are considered to have ‘en-
couraged or assisted’ a coercive and abusive partner to commit the act of
violence and are, therefore, convicted of the substantive offence, including
murder.
Drawing on interviews with female prisoners, elicited from two research
studies, this article argues that the abusive nature of the relationship with
their co-defendant is central to women being present at the scene of vio-
lence and unable to withdraw (a tightly-defined act that enables the cir-
cumvention of prosecution under complicity liability) or being implicated
in the offence during the police investigation. This article, therefore, of-
fers a rare insight into the deeply-troubling ways in which women are held
581
C
2021 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard
League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting