Reimagining access to justice through the eyes of rural domestic violence survivors
| Author | Amy M Magnus,Frank A Donohue |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211035103 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13624806211035103
Theoretical Criminology
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13624806211035103
journals.sagepub.com/home/tcr
Reimagining access to justice
through the eyes of rural
domestic violence survivors
Amy M Magnus
California State University, Chico, USA
Frank A Donohue
University of Maryland, College Park, USA
Abstract
Access to justice is a theoretical construct and applied principle within the US legal
system, centering equity in access to legal services and representation. However, access
to justice extends beyond the legal sphere and into the daily lives of vulnerable people.
This article contributes to long-standing efforts to reimagine and repurpose the access
to justice framework through an ethnographic examination of rural domestic violence.
In doing so, there exists significant promise to transform access to justice in a way
that comprehensively sees and addresses inequity and injustice. Access to justice can
be used in a multitude of ways to make sense of vulnerability at the intersection of
rurality, domestic violence, resource accessibility, and activism, expanding the theoretical
framework beyond its original scope toward social justice.
Keywords
access to justice, activist knowledge, community mobilization, domestic violence,
inequality, rural
Introduction
There was physical, emotional, verbal [abuse] . . . my youngest daughter has witnessed a lot
. . . with the town being so small, I was away from him [while living in the shelter], but I still
didn’t really feel that safe.
(Rachel,1 rural domestic violence survivor)
Corresponding author:
Amy M Magnus, Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, California State University, Chico, 400
W 1st St, Chico, CA 95929, USA.
Email: ammagnus@csuchico.edu
1035103TCR0010.1177/13624806211035103Theoretical CriminologyMagnus and Donohue
research-article2021
Article
2022, Vol. 26(3) 434–455
Rachel moved to Reid in 2015 with her husband and two daughters. Soon after arriving,
Rachel’s husband, Peter, started to abuse her physically, emotionally, and verbally.
Rachel’s extended family lived in a nearby state, but Peter’s family and friends lived in
Reid, leaving her without a trustworthy social support system. Shortly after moving to
Reid, Peter kidnapped Rachel’s oldest daughter, Anna, using her as leverage to maintain
coercive control over Rachel. After a year of abuse, Rachel decided the only path for-
ward for her and her children was to leave her husband, which was challenging and
dangerous to do in this small town.
Upon fleeing, Rachel came to Western Services Agency (WSA), a social service
organization in Reid that provides help to survivors of domestic violence and other vul-
nerable community members. Following the support and emergency housing she
received from WSA, Rachel became an advocate and support system for disconnected
survivors in WSA’s three-bedroom shelter and throughout Reid. Rachel uses her per-
sonal vehicle to take other survivors to work, doctor appointments, food banks, and
grocery shopping. Rachel is a critical source of encouragement for new women in the
shelter.
Rachel’s motivation to do grassroots work stems from her own lived experience of
being a rural domestic violence survivor. Through survivors’ stories like Rachel’s, access
to justice becomes not just a legal endeavor, but a social justice endeavor at the grass-
roots level in rural communities. Rachel’s efforts are admirable and helpful; however,
they raise important questions about infrastructural deprivation, neoliberal discourse,
and the expectation of rural people, especially survivors, to ‘responsibilize’ and ‘pull
themselves up by their bootstraps’ (Brown and Baker, 2012). Although rural survivors
are indeed resilient, this structural reality has been widely criticized by critical, feminist
scholars and activists as a passive strategy for allowing social inequality and marginality
to persist (Comack and Peter, 2005; Juhila et al., 2017).
This article speaks to the double-edged sword of small-town life. On one hand, rural
life offers close connections and intimate community but, on the other hand, those con-
nections exacerbate domestic violence through stigmatization and perpetrators’ accessi-
ble network of family and friends. We explore how this context complicates domestic
violence survivors’ access to justice; this is critical for understanding what frames survi-
vors’ choices and lived experiences. This double-edged sword is a fundamental dimen-
sion of accessing justice—as both a principle and a practice—that we argue shapes the
pursuit of access to justice for those most vulnerable. We demonstrate the utility of the
access to justice framework and the micro-level mechanisms through which it becomes
a reality or not. As such, we examine the nexus at which rurality and domestic violence
meet to better understand and advance access to justice.
Access to justice as principle and praxis
Access to justice is both a theoretical construct and an applied principle within the US
legal system. Traditionally, access to justice argues that people are entitled to equal
access to and treatment by the legal system (Pruitt, 2008; Rhode, 2001; Udell, 2018).
This includes access to affordable lawyers, self-help centers, civil protection order pro-
ceedings, and grievance mechanisms. Criminologists and sociolegal scholars have taken
435
Magnus and Donohue
To continue reading
Request your trial