Type:	Journal Article
Title:	The politics of place: practice, process, and kinship in domestic violence courts
Other Titles:	Human organization
Authors:	McCall, Patricia L Lazarus-Black, Mindie
Keywords:	Cross-cultural;Specialist courts;Protection orders
Year:	2006
Publisher:	Society for Applied Anthropology
Citation:	65 (2), 2006
Notes:	General Overview: This article describes the processing of domestic violence cases in Trinidad, in the Caribbean, with implications for the domestic violence law implementation in other common law courts, such as the US. The article provides background on Trinidad and its people, and the familial patterns of the two largest ethnic groups. The article describes Trinidad’s domestic violence legislation and discusses jurisdictional differences in the courts. Objective: The article is based on a study that set out to analyse the processing of domestic violence cases in Trinidad. The study sought to examine to what extent the law can (or cannot) realise intentions to protect people from domestic violence. Given the focus of much research on domestic violence on the international “north”, the study deliberately focused on analysing domestic violence cases in a Caribbean country. Methods: This study is based on fieldwork in Trinidad in two magistrate’s courts and a statistical analysis of domestic violence court records for a period of two years. Attorneys, magistrates, probation officers and parties involved in domestic violence cases were also interviewed. The fieldwork took place in three phases from 1997 to 2002. The study investigated: * the implementation of domestic violence law; ie. the frequency with which women take men to court, the frequency with which men charge women with abuse, how often same-sex parties press charges and how often applications for protection orders are dismissed, awarded or withdrawn * the power of kinship ideology and practice on litigants, legal professionals and case histories and Results: The study found that applicants for domestic violence orders share a number of patterned characteristics, across the two courts. The results showed, surprisingly, a sizable proportion of men claiming violence against them by female partners, who made applications for orders (albeit, often as cross applications). The study found that applications for extended protection orders are dismissed or withdrawn at high rates. In addition, there was unexpected variability in the case outcomes between the two courts examined. A number of barriers were identified as contributing to the high rate of dismissal or withdrawing of orders, including the architecture and structural conditions of the courts, court staff workload, court organisation, contrasting judicial styles and kinship practices and ideologies. These lead to quite different outcomes of similar cases in different courts operating under the same legislation. The authors suggest that the results could be extended to other jurisdictions outside of Trinidad. Conclusions: The article concludes that courts are “discordant locales’ (See Frohmann 2004) or places where people applying for protection orders will meet with different forms of structural, practical and ideological resistance to their claims for rights.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/12196
ISSN:	0018-7259
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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