The last few decades has seen the dramatic rise of the criminalization of domestic violence perpetration across the globe. As a result, police have received a large share of domestic violence funding and partnerships between law enforcement and advocates have become the norm. But if only 20% of survivors feel safer after calling the police , then it is important to think critically about the relationship between survivors and their advocates, and the criminal justice system.
In this episode, David & Ruth explore the relationship between advocates and law enforcement with author and law school professor Leigh Goodmark and a team from Embrace, a network of Refuge's serving communities rural Wisconsin. The Embrace team shares the story of how funding was clawed back by a sheriff and local government council who objected to their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, racial equity and police reform. They discuss the realities of advocacy in the current atmosphere of calls for police reform, and how law enforcement's response sometimes has a chilling effect on victims of violence seeking assistance. Leigh Goodmark shares her insights into the history of advocacy within the context of the carceral system.
To learn about the Embrace program: https://www.embracewi.org/
To donate to Embrace: https://www.gofundme.com/f/embrace-loses-county-funding-over-blm-support
Read Leigh's New York Times op-ed on decriminalizing domestic violence
Purchase Decriminalizing Domestic Violence by Leigh Goodmark
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
The last few decades has seen the dramatic rise of the criminalization of domestic violence perpetration across the globe. As a result, police have received a large share of domestic violence funding and partnerships between law enforcement and advocates have become the norm. But if only 20% of survivors feel safer after calling the police , then it is important to think critically about the relationship between survivors and their advocates, and the criminal justice system.
In this episode, David & Ruth explore the relationship between advocates and law enforcement with author and law school professor Leigh Goodmark and a team from Embrace, a network of Refuge's serving communities rural Wisconsin. The Embrace team shares the story of how funding was clawed back by a sheriff and local government council who objected to their support for the Black Lives Matter movement, racial equity and police reform. They discuss the realities of advocacy in the current atmosphere of calls for police reform, and how law enforcement's response sometimes has a chilling effect on victims of violence seeking assistance. Leigh Goodmark shares her insights into the history of advocacy within the context of the carceral system.
To learn about the Embrace program: https://www.embracewi.org/
To donate to Embrace: https://www.gofundme.com/f/embrace-loses-county-funding-over-blm-support
Read Leigh's New York Times op-ed on decriminalizing domestic violence
Purchase Decriminalizing Domestic Violence by Leigh Goodmark
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
[00:00:17] And we're back, we're back. So this is partner with the survivor. [00:00:20][3.3]
Speaker 1: [00:00:21] We're not going to say the episode, no, [00:00:22][1.2]
Speaker 2: [00:00:23] because we always forget. And we're winding up 2020. Good riddance 2020. Except now, except except that. The podcast started at 23, lots of great things happening this. But the podcasts are in 2020, so this is our next to last episode, but I can say that in season one, we were really excited about the interviews we've got lined up for this show. We're hoping to do one more show a wind up show that just Ruth and I before the end of the year. Yeah. And oh, I'm David Mandel, the executive director of the Safer Together Institute, [00:00:59][36.7]
Speaker 1: [00:01:00] and I'm Ruth Stern's Mandel, the e-learning and communications manager. And this is partnered with the survivor. That's right. We have a we have a panel today and we're very, very excited about this panel. And I'll describe how this panel came about in a couple of minutes. But I'm going to let David do a couple of disclosures here. [00:01:19][19.1]
Speaker 2: [00:01:20] So yes, I'm disclosing our whiteness. This is what's happening is this panel is going to really engage. You know, we'll touch on a really major conversations intersections around race, policing, overpolicing, domestic violence, domestic violence, sexual violence. And it's important to acknowledge and make visible that the panel that we have this particular panel is is all white. And so as we dove into those issues, when I really own that perspective and I think it's really important for us, you know, I just gave a talk at our North American conference on Safe Together and Anti-racism and Equity. And I can do that from my point of view, and it's it's it's really important to acknowledge that that this is a particular point of view and perspective. And then I'm partnered with Survivor. Just like in and other institute, we've done a lot of work. A lot of the model is really tied to equity in anti-racism and there's so much more work we need to do. And I really, you know, people ever get to see that keynote and they'll be more like it. That was really important for me to say, this is what we've done. It's not enough. There's more to do and also to own my uncomfortableness and my awkwardness around that topic. And I think, you know, I acknowledge that for our audience and invite people to keep stepping in to what are often hard and challenging conversations we're working with. Equity and anti-racism consultant. And I said to her the other day, as we're talking, I'm much more comfortable talking about my male privilege and issues around sexual orientation and sexuality and gender than I am around race, right? And just so it's an invitation to other folks to kind of reflect on where they are and their their voices on anti-racism and just acknowledge the missing parts. Right? That will be here today. [00:03:19][119.5]
Speaker 1: [00:03:20] So this is the beginning of a conversation. This is not the definitive word, and I hope that this conversation sparks a lot of conversations around the globe about the relationship between the battered women's movement and policing and the realities that live in that relationship both beneficial and detrimental. Because that honest assessment of where we are at in our responses to criminality, domestic violence, sexual abuse and many of the ills that plague society are really important to us moving forward. And so we have brought together a group of people who deeply impacted me. I love honesty and brave people because I grew up in a place that was very dishonest and was very abusive, and power and control and ideology and religion were used to harm people. And so when I saw what these days group of people had done and then the corresponding response, I was deeply moved to ask them to come on our podcast and start this conversation with us. And so there we have a team of people here from the embrace network of refuges in Wisconsin. And just a brief overview of what occurred that sparked this podcast was that Embrace had come out with a statement of support for Black Lives Matters and for anti-racism and work within that area, particularly as it impacts victim survivors because it does. And they were then the only word that can be used retaliated against by a local sheriff who then clawed back funding for one of their refuges. And given the fact that we've been doing this long discussion about officer involved domestic violence. And that perpetration retention rates within police, 65 percent of police perpetrators are retained on forces. If we look at this from the standpoint of perpetrators, patterns of behaviors, of the use of power and control and coercive control in order to harm and control victims and silence victims of abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, then this fits that pattern. That was a coercively controlling move by somebody who did not want to hear that discussion. And so I asked myself, Where where are we now in the battered women's movement? What advances have we made and how is this different than where we started? Where the battered women's movement was a grassroots movement to bring safety to victims and survivors and was accountable to those victims and survivors? And as we move towards a more carceral view of domestic violence and sexual assault, we partner with police. We gave them 82 percent of our violence against women funding, so only 12 percent of that funding goes directly to services. And then we allowed them to retain domestic violence perpetrators. We were afraid of losing relationships by calling that out. And that has had a deep impact, not just on the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, but on public safety. Because 75 percent of those police perpetrators also perpetrate civil rights violations and criminality. We have a problem. And what are we going to do about it? [00:07:20][240.2]
Speaker 2: [00:07:20] So, so here we are with the team from embracing and introduce them and our other panelist, Lee Good Mark, who's as an old friend of mine. So we've got Britney missing analysts who are program coordinators, domestic violence program coordinators from different programs in Wisconsin as part of the Embrace network. So we hear from them in a minute. And then also we have the good mark, who is an old friend of mine. Think you and I have known each other for 20 years? I think maybe at this point, at least, I think that's right. The Marjorie Cook, professor of law and director of the Gender Violence Clinic at the University of Maryland, Carey School of Law. I hope I got that right. It takes forever to do that. That takes like a half hour. That's half the show. [00:08:10][49.9]
Speaker 1: [00:08:11] It does. You know, I make it that way so that I get a disproportionate amount of airtime. [00:08:15][3.7]
Speaker 3: [00:08:15] There you go. So we're going to start least going to, you know, be cued in at different points with different questions for me or for me. But we want to start with the Embrace team, right? [00:08:27][11.3]
Speaker 1: [00:08:27] We do. We definitely want to start with the Embrace team, and we want to talk about how the TV world in general needs to be thinking about working with law enforcement agencies and the needs that we have moving forward. So I just wanted to open that up for Brittany Macy and Alyssa to just kind of grab onto that and talk about that because. Yeah. So one of my thoughts, actually, when you opened that point up was, you know, I think advocates in general, we have never really been anything but super like supportive and kind and thankful to law enforcement officers that we're working with because that's what we've been taught as advocates, is that we have to have this awesome, harmonious relationship with our local law enforcement officers in order for this system to work for victims. However, even in doing that, we're discovering the system isn't working for victims. And so. We as as a whole movement as well as in our organization with Embrace, we're really just trying to think about how these relationships need to change and how we need to get away from trying to please these systems that aren't working for the victims that we are supposed to be working for. Missy, did you want to chime in on that because I know a lot of times advocates are really not viewed as professionals and they have to work a lot harder and therefore those relationships with law enforcement seem very highly pressurized in the power dynamic is is really in their side of the court, particularly if through DHS or through other funding sources. They're receiving a lot of our money, which is intended to go to domestic violence victims and services. Can you talk a little bit about that, Brittney Missy? I'm sorry. Yeah. So one thing that we always find interesting in our little advocacy world up in rural Wisconsin is that we're expected to know as much as we possibly can know about the criminal justice system. But the criminal justice system doesn't know a lot about the advocacy world, and there's a really unfair balance of trying to support a survivor through the criminal justice system. If that's the route they decide to go in, the criminal justice system doesn't know how to support the survivor. There's been a few times where survivors have been questioned about wanting accompaniment services, which is their legal right in our state, just because law enforcement doesn't realize that that's something that exists. And how much work that we've had to do on our end as advocates to make sure that survivors are getting that right, that they have just as a basic education level. So one is just that, that really unfair balance of having to try to tell somebody, you know, survivors have these rights. And as an advocacy service, they have the right to have us there throughout the criminal justice process and having to explain that to the criminal justice process has been really, really difficult. We've had a lot of questions lately surrounding, well, what are you guys going to do now that law enforcement isn't supporting you or that multiple different agencies aren't supporting you? And I think it's that idea that we are an extension of law enforcement as. Our own entity, really, when we look at our services just for embrace, only one in five survivors utilize the criminal justice system that we're serving. Most survivors have identified that's not a safe route for them to go down. That isn't a safe option that they want to do for whatever reason. And so really, if law enforcement does determined that they don't want to send us referrals, they determined they don't want to work with us, they don't want to support us. In the end, they're affecting those survivors that need the advocacy service, the advocacy services still live on. We aren't a unit of enforcement where our own thing, and that's something that we've really been exploring. You know, prior to this incident, but more so now that we really had this huge community push is that we need to rethink what it looks like for supporting survivors and what we are really, you know, giving them the options and what options may be better for them, for what they identify as needing. [00:12:54][267.0]
Speaker 2: [00:12:56] Missy, thanks a lot. Lee, I'm just thinking about the situation in Wisconsin with embrace and I'm thinking about a study I just looked at the other day that interviewed women. It was 2015 and women who both had called the police and women who hadn't yet call the police or had to call the police. And overwhelmingly, the response was they didn't think would be helpful or if they did have the experience, it wasn't helpful to them. And you've been looking at this issue for a decade, at least, if not more. You know, with a troubled marriage, you've written two books on it decriminalizing domestic violence of people want these books. They're really great resources. But can you talk about your take on how we got here, where people are talking like this, some seamless relationship between advocates and law enforcement that advocates are there to serve law enforcement, not the survivors? How did we end up in the United States, at least in this situation? [00:13:50][53.4]
Speaker 1: [00:13:52] If you go back historically to say the 1960s and 1970s, what you see in the police training manuals of the time, our messages to officers that say don't make arrests in cases involving intimate partner violence or domestic violence, tell the guy. And then it was always a guy, and it was always in the context of a married couple to take a walk around the block, but don't intervene. And towards the end of the 70s and the early 80s, folks from the anti-violence movement really started to question the failure of police to use their discretion to treat intimate partner violence like any other crime, and believed, I think pretty strongly that doing so would change. The rates of domestic violence would lessen the rates of domestic violence would be the kind of deterrent that people hoped that it would be. And so you see, a couple of things start to happen. In 1977, Oregon adopts the first mandatory arrest law requiring police to make arrests in any case where they have probable cause to do so. And then in 1984, three things happen that really do lead to kind of the modern era of criminalization. One is the attorney general's task force on Family Violence, which says domestic violence is a crime that needs to be treated like any other crime. The second is Thurman vs. City of Torrington, Connecticut, where Tracy Thurman is awarded a multimillion dollar verdict for the police failure to intervene to protect her. And the third is the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, which is research that shows for the first time that arrest may have some deterrent impact on recidivist violence. Now, the researchers said, be careful it's got to be replicated before we start implementing policies. Nobody listened. And really, those three things come together and people across the country, jurisdictions all across the country looking for ways to avoid the kind of liability that happened in the Thurmond case start to adopt mandatory and preferred arrest laws, which leads us then to know drop prosecution and in kind of a whole slew of pro criminalization policies that were thought to have a significant impact or thought would have a significant impact on rates of violence. All of this culminates in Iowa in 1994, which is in the crime bill for a reason. It is in the crime bill because the response to violence against women is meant to be a criminal response. And the focus of Iowa, which is primarily a funding bill, is funding for the criminal legal system and incentives to beef up the criminal legal system. I think it's really important to say that from the beginning of this kind of ramping up of the criminal legal systems involvement in intimate partner violence, women of color were saying, This is not going to serve us well, this is not going to serve our communities well. If you look at the writings of Beth Ritchie and incite women of color against violence and Dr. Angela Davis, if you look at Mary Masood's comments in 1994 when Bill was passed saying this is a problem, if you look at the work of Brenda Smith, who was at the time the general counsel to the National Women's Law Center, who said to them, Don't advocate for this bill because criminalization is going to be bad for communities of color. You see that those voices were there all along, but the mainstream anti-violence movement strongly believed that criminalization was what was needed to ensure that intimate partner violence was taken seriously and those. And it really formed partnerships with law and order conservatives interested in putting more money into the apparatus of the carceral state. And that's kind of how you get to where we are today. [00:17:12][200.8]
Speaker 3: [00:17:14] Hashtag, we want our funding back. So moving into the net, I'm trying to get that trending, by the way. I would like that 80 percent, 82 percent back in services. Flip that. Let's do it. So what about the the other piece of that, which is survivor of fear around advocates and law enforcement relationships? Having police on refuge as board of directors has had a chilling effect. For some survivors seeking safety now, we could break that down a couple of ways, and I'm going to I'm going to throw it again to the Embrace team to kind of talk about that a little bit because I think it's a very important piece. Yeah, thanks. So before and I really want to talk about that, but before we get to that, I just want to circle back to the very beginning. We put those Black Lives Matter signs at our four office locations after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We're not very far from that right across the border. For the most part. We didn't do that to. Make waves or to offend law enforcement. It was a symbol, a way to show black indigenous people of color that we stand with them and that we're safe for those people. Communities of color, because historically that hasn't always been the case. Something with our white privilege is we can go into a building and just assume that we're safe and we're going to be accepted and welcome there. That's not always the case for people of color and LGBTQ people. So while yes, you know these, these relationships with law enforcement have never been easy and they have felt forced. This whole backlash wasn't to try to upset people. It was. It was the whole point of it was to let black indigenous people of color know you're safe with us and we trust you and we support you. And then fast forwarding to your question about, oh, what's going on now with survivors and their reaction? So Britney or Missy, I'm sorry to remember who mentioned that only one in five of our survivors have used the criminal justice system. So that being said, there hasn't been a significant change. But we have noticed some people have come to us. We had one survivor that came forward and said. The only reason I came to you guys is because I realized that you're no longer working with law enforcement, and I feel like it's safe for me to do so. We have had another survivor say, I don't know if I should come receive services from Embrace because I don't want backlash from law enforcement. So we see that fear and how embedded that is and. I just want to mention as well where a white mainstream domestic violence sexual violence agency. And that's what we see, right? These survivors are mainly white that are coming forward and saying that they have this fear. Imagine what it's like for black indigenous people of color and the fear that they experience from law enforcement. Yeah, I think I always want to put a behavioral pin in things when survivors say that they're fearful of coming forward because police are on the board of directors of a refuge. It's because those police they have experienced most likely as being perpetrators, and it's super important to say that there is such a high retention rate of domestic violence perpetrators in police and sexual violence perpetrators and police that we know even if we strip the sexual violence piece out that we have a two in five chance that a perpetrator is answering our 9-1-1 calls. So this is an interesting, jumbled mess of, first of all, choosing responses which would limit the ability of survivors that are of color and indigenous to come forward and get services and be appropriately served and criminality. And I think really, we have to keep making that boundary very, very clear that these are two things that are happening. At the same [00:21:56][282.2]
Speaker 2: [00:21:56] time, I think there's even more and I'd love to bring this into the conversation from all the panelists experience, which is their safety and on safety comes in lots of different ways. It could be a direct response to police. It could be about losing your kids to child protection. You could be losing your kids in family court. And one of the things that we try to connect the dots for people around is that child protection often looks to kind of polices as a as a definitive protective action. And it's one of the things that will be the tick box for did she call the police? Did she go to a shelter? Did she go to a refuge like these are the classic things that child protection will look to to say if it's a mother's being protective or not? And and when we have a system where it's not safe to call the police. Because either you're going to be you're in danger of being deported or because of excessive force or violence or unsafe in your community, or you don't feel like it's going to make [00:22:55][58.6]
Speaker 1: [00:22:55] you safer with the police for a place where you weren't [00:22:57][2.0]
Speaker 2: [00:22:58] a traitor. You worried in a community about who's who's that police officers are going to confess and then child protection says, Well, you didn't call the police. Now we may take your kids because you're clearly failing to protect. So I'm just wondering, you know, go over to lead to you if you have a comment on some of. Not on the intersection of the police and advocates, but the intersection of police with family court and child protection. [00:23:24][26.4]
Speaker 1: [00:23:26] Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree with you more, and I think there's there are additional layers to it as well. So the idea that we have a litmus test for what it is to be a protective parent is deeply problematic when we have not just a policing system, but a court system that is not at all willing to hear the claims of non-stereotypical victims and of victims who may not have done everything that the court system wanted them to do. And so it's not just that, for example, you call the police and they don't do what you need them to do, but you call the police and you're arrested. And the rates of criminalized survivors are ridiculously high, particularly in jurisdictions with mandatory arrest laws. And so there's that piece of it which leads directly to the loss of your children. Family courts are not willing to hear from non-conforming survivors, so if you go in and you are not white and middle class and heterosexual and weak and meek and submissive, if you are angry, if you start to, if you start to question the court in any way, all of those things become reasons for the court to say you're not actually a victim. And so all of that is playing into this idea that one should come into the system to get services. If you know that you've tried the system, it hasn't worked for you or you've had interactions with police officers or judges who have said, Well, you're too angry to be a victim or you make too much money to be a victim or you didn't leave. And so you're not a victim, you're much less likely to avail yourselves of those services again. I also think there's a question that we need to make sure that we're asking, which is what is it that we think the criminal legal system is doing for us? And is it actually doing those things? [00:25:21][115.7]
Speaker 3: [00:25:22] Yes, that's a great one. [00:25:24][1.1]
Speaker 2: [00:25:24] It's a great question. And I said, I think about and I want to I want to hear from that. The Embrace team in a second. I keep thinking about a child protection supervisor who had to right. I asked them years ago as working inside a child protection system to write about their experience, their personal experience as a survivor. So they were professional, but they're also a survivor. They would only do it anonymously because they were afraid that if they identified themselves inside their workplace, that that would come back to haunt them. But but this woman, who was a child protection supervisor, said I called the police. It was horrible getting involved with the law enforcement and it was just the police. It was the courts. But I don't want this to be just about the police because really it's a system. She said that being involved with that system, I wouldn't do that again. And she's really trying to educate her, her peers, to say, don't don't judge survivors who say, I'm not going to call the police is not being protective. But I think this huge fear I'm going to lose my kids. I call the police. I'm going to lose my kids, either to custody or to child protection. I wonder if the folks in a race could speak to what you're hearing from survivors around that because listening is the system doing what we want to do. And one of the things survivors are telling us is the system has not helped me keep my kids safe or help me keep my kids. [00:26:47][83.0]
Speaker 1: [00:26:49] Yeah. I would love to chime in on that. So I work in the Ross County office, which is where our safe shelter is located for individuals who are at high risk of homicide. And one one thing that we see over and over again is the idea that when harm is happening to somebody that they need to follow the steps they're told to follow, they need to call law enforcement. They need to get a restraining order. They need to be the perfect victim in court. They need to fully participate within the criminal justice system. And in the end, the abuser will get arrested and go to prison and everything will be fine. We've never seen it play out that way because it doesn't play out that way. And not only that, but it's the idea that once you go through the criminal justice system, which is incredibly retraumatizing and it's incredibly scary and it's incredibly confusing to survivors that once that perpetrator goes away, everything will be better. And that is never the case. I have never worked with a survivor who been to the criminal justice system and said, Oh, look, I'm all better now. I'm completely healed. But that's what survivors being told will happen. Everything will be hunky dory once everything is done, and it's not, it's just not. And as we've all been discussing, we have seen numerous times, especially in the shelter. Parents come with the caregivers, come with their children because that was the only option they had. It's I need to go to the shelter. Otherwise my kids are going to be taken from me and I can't lose my kids. And it's the idea that the system knows what safety is, and safety is a perfect box that everybody fits into when it just isn't. That's a big thing that when we're training advocates at our at our center and training, retraining ourselves all the time because we have to constantly be learning is that we're not the experts and survivors experience. If a survivor does not want to go forward with the criminal justice system, we're not going to. If the survivor does, then we'll support them through that. It's the idea that everybody's lived experience is going to fit under the same safety is something that we need to try to get rid of, and that's something that happened so much within the criminal justice system is being told. This person that's being harmed needs to get a restraining order because that's going to fully protect them when we know in the long run, that's a piece of paper. It's not really going to protect you. It's not an invisible force field. You're still going to be a danger of being harmed. So what are other safety routes that we can go down to make sure that, you know, we are constantly improving your safety plan? We're constantly reviewing what's going on and what do you think is best for you to do? And I just love you guys. Can I just say that seriously, just I love you guys, because that needs to be said over and over again and as plainly and loudly as possible. You know, one of the things that really struck me about the assumption that that police involvement is beneficial is that that's a really privileged position. I grew up incredibly poor again and in a cold on 111 acres in in an out in the middle of nowhere. And we knew that when there was sobriety stops by the police, there was a price to pay. If you are a woman in a car by yourself. You needed to pay a price in order to leave. Do you think that women there want to call the police? On an abuser. And that's part of the thing that I think we have to talk about because it's not just all about race, there's some socio economic factors here as well that we really do need to address because there's plenty of people living in environments where they know that calling the police means really complicated involvement could mean violence to them and could mean harm to their families, and they're fearful to do so. And that has to be talked about [00:30:28][219.2]
Speaker 2: [00:30:29] and also means the possible loss of a job. The possible loss of transportation. The possible loss of housing, all of which actually exacerbate the correlates of intimate partner violence. So if your goal is to stop intimate partner violence, but what you do makes people more economically disadvantaged, you are actually driving violence, not preventing it. And I think that's one of the huge links that people have to make between the intervention of law enforcement and this idea that that violence will drop as a result. I mean, one of the conversations that's happening around the pandemic, for example, is all about why are rates going so high? Well, rates are going so high for lots of reasons, but a big one is the economic stress that families are facing and police intervention and the carceral systems intervention doesn't lessen that economic stress. It makes it worse. [00:31:18][48.4]
Speaker 3: [00:31:18] And what's interestingly is the Chicago study showed us that when they did that 10 year look back and they saw the high rates of deaths among survivors, not because their perpetrator had killed them or murdered them, but because of that socio economic struggle and the subsequent impact to them not having the supports that they needed. We are not. We are harming survivors is what we're doing. We're not doing our jobs and we have to do better. [00:31:48][29.3]
Speaker 2: [00:31:50] I just wonder, you know, we're thinking about survivors and survivors experience. And there's a study that the Mirrorball study out of the United Kingdom and they looking at men's behavior change programs, what we call better intervention programs and what survivors wanted from those programs. And I think they're a good proxy for what they want from the entire system, you know, because they're really saying what will make my life better and physical safety was in there, but it wasn't top of the list. And we all know this. Everybody in this, on this, on this, on this show knows this, but room to maneuver. And being respected and being listened to. But but but, you know, Lee, going back to your point is, you know, if I lose my job because I call the police or I lose my job because I have to go to a shelter if I lose my job or my kids because. Or, yeah, you know, my partner loses their job because they've been arrested today, I get more room to maneuver. Did I get more freedom in my life? Is my situation for my kids stronger? You know, and so I think for me, at least, we spent a lot of time at the Safety Institute looking at all this through a kind of a family functioning model, which doesn't mean the family is that everybody's staying together. But but a much more holistic view of is the family stronger or weaker? You know, and and is that survivor and the unit with her and the child? Let's say they have stronger unit than they were before we got involved. And to me, Lee, I guess that's part of the answer. You know, not about the law enforcement system in general, but all of us. [00:33:25][95.4]
Speaker 1: [00:33:28] But it's so fascinating that, you know, thinking back, David, you and I met doing work around the Green Book and the intersection of domestic violence and child maltreatment. It's really interesting to think about what systems were at that table and what systems weren't the systems that were at that table that were presumed needed to change where advocacy, child welfare and domestic violence advocates. But the police weren't at that table because people just assumed that that system was functioning, I guess fine in terms of the overlap between domestic violence and child maltreatment. We do not hold that system accountable for the harm that it does, and it goes directly to what you're talking about, that the carceral system undermines families, it undermines them by creating trauma in the people that it that it interacts with. It undermines them economically. It undermines them by creating distressed communities that don't have the capacity to help provide safety for families to do work in a community accountability kind of way. It is. Our assumption that that is a helping system is so is dead wrong, it's just wrong. It is not helping. [00:34:34][66.0]
Speaker 3: [00:34:35] And I think I think it, you know, it should be a relief. I want to say it should be a relief to law enforcement and to the criminal courts to be told you're not responsible for fixing all of this, I think. I think that's part of the [00:34:48][13.4]
Speaker 1: [00:34:48] mismatch, right? They're not equipped. They're not [00:34:50][2.2]
Speaker 2: [00:34:51] equipped. But there is. But there is an entitlement to funding that has been created over time that people are not willing to relinquish. And to me, that goes right back to embrace. I, you know, as an outsider looking in what I see is an organization that's funding is based on its partnership with you and to the extent that you don't want to partner with them anymore, that jeopardizes funding that they think they're entitled to. So they're going to take their funds and go find somebody who will play with them because of the way that the incentives in VAWA are that require community based agencies to get funding to work with law enforcement. One of the first things on a policy level we have to be talking about is decoupling the link between support for community based agencies and their support for law enforcement. That is just a problem, right? [00:35:37][46.3]
Speaker 3: [00:35:38] Yeah, no. I mean, I think that this lands right in the question, as well as how to break professional's silence around the reality of this problem. So many professionals are trying to protect their funding and protect their relationships with law enforcement at the expense of doing what's right for survivors and families and children. And we have to face this together as advocates, as people who are working within the industry and really, truly be compassionate and honest about it. I understand that people get into positions where they believe that the way forward is to play nice with certain people. But there is a logical and ethical and moral end to that imperative when it starts to harm people because we're not doing our jobs. And I think we're there. I think that I want to call out the battered women's movement as a survivor. I want to say we're not doing what we said we were going to do. We're not living up to our values and our mission, and we've given away our power. And I want our power back, our back and [00:36:49][70.7]
Speaker 2: [00:36:49] the money and the money and the money. Give me the money back. So I want to ask the Embrace team because I'm curious thinking about this conversation. If you. When you posted the Black Lives Matter sign, if there was much deliberation on that and its possible consequences, if you just did it because it was the right thing to do and you did it and then but once it was up there, clearly. You had a choice there is how you responded and you didn't cave. Can you talk a little bit about that, that that courage and that kind of decision making process? [00:37:22][32.9]
Speaker 1: [00:37:23] Yeah, absolutely. So honestly, we didn't put a lot of thought into should we put this sign up or should we not put the sign up? It was. I mean, it's always been in embraces mission to end all forms of violence. That doesn't just mean domestic and sexual violence. That means police brutality. That means, you know, oppression of all people in this country. And so when George Floyd was murdered? We put the signs up. I mean, it was a no brainer. And I think we did have a little bit of fear because we are in such a rural area in Wisconsin where not many people are progressively thinking about these things. But yeah, I mean, we might get some community members who call us and say, What are you doing with that sign? But we never thought that it would go the way that it did. And while we appreciate you guys saying that that was a courageous move, it wasn't. It's what you know to us. That's what everyone should be doing. And especially everyone who's working in this field of advocacy. But the problem is people are silenced. They're afraid of the backlash that they're going to receive, just like we did. We have had community members as well as business owners. Other nonprofit organizations in our areas reach out to us privately and tell us we're proud of the work that you're doing and thank you for doing it. And we agree and we support you. But we won't say it publicly because we're afraid that then our organization, our business is going to be the next target. Wow. And that's power and control right there. Seriously, that is power control right there. Well, yes, we've been told that we are being bad partners in our communities because we're not just playing. In the court that that the people in power in our communities think that we need to stay in. I think it's really important to emotional lives reform. And what I mean by that is any entity that is comprised of humans is going to have human problems. There's going to be abusers in large systems. There's going to be abuse of power in large systems. And it's the system's job to have checks and balances and the government's job to create accountability that's independent from that system to assure that those checks and balances are actually working. And really, when we teach the principles of behavior change change which is naming, claiming and changing those three principles can be applied to law enforcement or to any other system. If we are harming people, we must name it. We have to have the humility to change it. Now I know that's a problem for liability because you're afraid you're going to be sued. Guess what? There's a $200 million lawsuit right now on Long Island because there is a police perpetrator who was ignored and murdered his son. You think this is expensive? You think being accountable is expensive? Wait till those lawsuits of $200000. $200 million, excuse me, $200 million start to hit law enforcement and our budgets because it's going to happen because this is apparently the only way to create reform. So being honest about the fact that the system is broken and that there are criminal elements, abuse of power that needs to be addressed is just logical. There doesn't need to be a motion about it. Law enforcement doesn't need to stand up and feel maligned or attacked. Because if they don't want criminals and law enforcement, it should be a very zero emotional equation. But it's not. Which leads to the next question why is it so emotional for people to talk about police reform? If all we're asking is for criminals to be fired from police forces and for us to be accountable to our own values and mission and the statement that we're harm, we're helping people. We have to be accountable to how that and change our behaviors, we have to change our behavior, [00:41:55][271.1]
Speaker 2: [00:41:55] something direct that question to Lee because Lee, you've been getting reactions to your books for [00:42:00][5.3]
Speaker 1: [00:42:01] years and years. [00:42:01][0.6]
Speaker 2: [00:42:02] I'm curious. I'm sure a lot of those reactions have been emotional from a lot of different directions. Can you can you share something about that? [00:42:09][6.8]
Speaker 1: [00:42:09] I can. So the first my first book came out in 2012, and it was at this point looking like a fairly tame critique of the legal systems response to intimate partner violence, given what I wrote after that. And people got very, very upset. And what I didn't anticipate was that a lot of the people who were upset came from the anti-violence community. What I learned from that is that in the same way that as feminists, we've always said the personal is political, the political is also personal. And what people took from my book was you and the anti-violence community made a series of choices that have hurt survivors. And that was very hard for people to hear. Very hard for people to hear. Flashing forward, you know, in 2018, my second book came out and it's it's called decriminalizing domestic violence. It tells you right up front that you're going to have a problem with it. What's interesting about that book has been the change in the way that people have reacted to it. So when I started talking about it in twenty sixteen or so, people said, You are insane. That is the most dangerous thing I have ever heard. You're wrong. They tried various people, tried to keep me off of panels at various conferences. There was a fair amount of backlash. Flash forward to 2020, when we're talking about defund the police and people are saying to me, why is the book so regressive? Why is it a reformist reform book? Why does it believe that the system can be reformed and in some way? And the answer that I've given to that is because at the time that I wrote it, I thought those things, I don't think those things anymore. I have kind of fully become a prison abolitionist. I do not believe that this system can be reformed because I believe that the system is doing exactly what it is meant to do. This system, the carceral system, is meant to suppress, repress and harm people of color, particularly black people. And it does that really well. And there is no reforming a system that does that. There is no reforming a police system that comes out of the anti, the slave catching patrols of the antebellum period. You can't make that system different as as many good people as may be involved in it. It is a structural problem that comes from the original mission and the structural racism that's part of it is so deeply ingrained that it can't be changed. That's really hard for people who have invested their time and their professional identity in many ways in building. And so when you look at a lot of the the leadership of the anti-violence movement, that leadership is really struggling. Now with this question of do we keep throwing good money after bad? Do we keep going down this path recognizing the harm that it has done to people of color and particularly black people, to low-income people, to LGBTQ people, to the partners of police officers? You can start to pass off so many different populations who the carceral system harms and what you get left with is the stereotypical victim of violence who may or may not be helped by that system. But knowing all that, how do we make that change? [00:45:27][197.3]
Speaker 3: [00:45:27] Yeah. And I think that one of the challenges, Lee, is that when people hear that they get really scared because they don't feel that this is a solution that's that's attainable, that's practical, that we can hang our hat on. And I think people also hear in that analysis that we don't advocate for isolating very dangerous abusers who are going to murder their families, which is not true, right? Those human beings need to be isolated away from the ability to harm other people. But that's not actually currently happening in the majority of domestic violence cases. So why hold on to something that's not even being applied in the way that it was intended to be implied? [00:46:13][46.0]
Speaker 2: [00:46:16] You know, and I think when I listen to this conversation and have it inside my head, sometimes, you know, back and forth, and it's true. I do have these conversations inside my head and sometimes they come out and sometimes they don't. But one of the things I I believe and maybe I need to look at it and maybe, you know, you can help me with this and, you know, embrace folks can help me with this as well is that the criminalization of domestic violence drew an important cultural line. You know, Tracy Thurman is from the state that that I'm in and the United States and so extremely familiar with the history of the civil rights violation case, by the way, and is wondering it was basically she was being treated differently because of her status as a married person, as the wife of George and and that therefore the police received in the town of Taunton was sued based on civil rights violation, unequal treatment. I know the exact legal term, but. But I think it's really important to say we have ignored for so many years and given permission. Two men to be abusive to their. Partners to their children, to their coworkers, animals to you know, to. Well, I'm just saying that just sort of treat his properties idea and that for me at least, the idea of a rest to a cultural line that that that maybe had a positive impact. I guess I just always assumed it did not talk about the outcome in individual cases. I completely agree with the analysis. I'm talking about the message and the culture shift. So anyway, Leigh, I'll ask you to comment on that first, because I'm sure you've thought about this quite a bit as well. [00:48:01][105.7]
Speaker 1: [00:48:02] Yeah, I would say a couple of things. One is, I think that this idea that the law has an expressive function to say these are things is a society that we condone and these are things as a society that we don't condone as far less cultural impact than people choose to believe. And I think the way that you know, that is because rates of intimate partner violence have not decreased any more than the drop in the overall crime rate since we started seeing this as a society. I think what it's let us do is let us off the hook by saying what we legislated and we said it's against the law. We've done what we needed to do that will change the culture, but hasn't changed the culture because rates of violence aren't as lower as they should be. I mean, they're lower. There's a whole conversation to be had about that. They but they have not decreased any more than the drop in the overall crime rate. So we don't think that criminalizing has changed cultural norms in the way that we hoped it would. But what it did do was let people say, OK, we dealt with that. What's the next problem without really looking at having that impact that we wanted it to have? And so I actually think that in a way, it's even more pernicious than than it than we even might think it is. Because not only did it not work in terms of sending that cultural message, but it also allowed people to think we didn't need to do anything else. [00:49:20][77.5]
Speaker 3: [00:49:20] So how about anybody from the Embrace team? What's your perspective on this? What do you see on the ground in Wisconsin in terms of of how the law seems to affect people's thinking about their right to safety, freedom from coercive control? You know, those kind of things. [00:49:37][16.8]
Speaker 1: [00:49:42] I think what we're seeing up here in our little hub in northwest Wisconsin and, you know, over here in the in the woods, is that it? It's very it's very obvious when we talk to the community that law enforcement and the criminal justice system itself has such a power over survivors and has such a power over our small communities that there really isn't a lot that we can we can try to do from our end. But that's one thing that we are doing now. Even though we don't have a lot of power in our community, we still have the privilege that we have being a professional, being being a white mainstream program that we have to start having these conversations because there are people who won't be listened to because of because of the oppression that they hold, whether it be their skin color, whether it be their economic status, and that we have that privilege to be in spaces that other people can't be in. And so that's just one thing that we're doing on our end is we're having these uncomfortable conversations with people that they don't want to have. And prior to everything that happened in 2020, this this year that everything happened. We've been we were trying to have conversations, but we were as we were talked about, we were playing nice. We were trying to be comfortable. We were, you know, putting it in as a side conversation when it wasn't picked up. We were just kind of leave it be like, Oh, nobody wants to talk about race right now. That's OK, but we can't keep doing that. We just can't keep going down that route. So again, what we're doing over here, what we're seeing is that it's not working for survivors, and that's that's what our jobs are, is to be advocates for survivors, all survivors, not just the ones that happen to look like us or happen to have the same lives as us. So so what will be done from here on out? Is this continuing to have these conversations continuing to be uncomfortable? And again, we're not the experts by any means. We're just some. We're just an advocacy group that's trying our best, but we're going to keep learning, listening the voices of color, listening to the voices that need to be heard and making mistakes, learning and continuing to grow and hoping that our rural area grows with us. I am just I'm so grateful for you guys. You ladies. Sorry, I'm originally from California, so I defer to you guys seriously. I know that you don't think that it's heroic, but. What I I just got very emotional is that what I can say is that we minimize the small amounts of affirmation and acknowledgment and the impact that that has on victims and survivors who are struggling to be heard, and that your ability to say these things and to do it even under conflict and duress, in really kind and clear and loving ways that are grounded in the desire to assist survivors and victims to well-being and safety is a lifeline. And I just want to thank you for it, really? Seriously. Yeah. [00:52:45][182.9]
Speaker 2: [00:52:46] So we want to move towards wrapping up with a little bit of of what kind of things you want to share with people who are listening in and whether survivors or professionals. Now I'm going to start Ridley and leave the frame for me to think about as I think policymakers that we work with in all sorts of levels. They're looking at a landscape where you have, you know, things going on, like passing up coercive control laws. And in England and Wales, yes, you're seeing a step into that kind of adding to that castle framework. Anita, in a way that really looks at sort of a wider pattern of coercive control and criminalizing it. So you have that you have in the United States a sort of defund the police kind of movement and where the domestic violence movement is on that, we're not sure. And then you have and again, I'm speaking out of a degree of ignorance of what looks like to me say, and in Russia, do criminalization. That, to me, may feel like retrenchment around patriarchy. Right? And so that's the last thing I would want is that decriminalization was actually about a movement towards reinforcing old gender norms and patriarchy and permission to be abusive. So so for four in two minutes or less, you know, what do you want to sum up for the for the professionals, either legally or into professions, the policymakers like, what should they be thinking about at this point in time at decriminalization? [00:54:27][100.5]
Speaker 1: [00:54:28] Abolition is not about simply ceding the space and allowing for the worst angels of our nature to kind of fill the void. It's about thinking about what it is that we are asking the carceral system to do, acknowledging that the carceral system isn't doing that and thinking about how we might do it better do it effectively. Merriam Karma has always said doing this kind of work is going to cost us money. Defunding the police costs money because what you do is you take that money from police and you put it into community and you put it into things that are going to be preventive for me. You put it into economic programs, you put it into programs that genuinely give people power at times when they need it. You put it into effective abuser intervention programs that aren't shame based and that aren't based on a kind of an antiquated feminist idea of what causes intimate partner violence and instead is willing to look at the trauma that people experience. You put it into evidence based prevention programs for young kids. You put it into dealing with adverse childhood experiences. We have so much research that tells us what the correlates of intimate partner violence are, and none of them is an after the fact response by law enforcement is the answer for all of these things are other answers. Those answers cost money. And so it's not about simply saying, Well, we no longer care about this behavior. Go back and do as you were. It's about as a society, we are committed to creating systems that actually serve people across a variety of spectrums, particularly our most marginalized communities that don't rely on this coercive state power to implement. And that's how I think we need to do the work going forward. [00:56:14][106.7]
Speaker 3: [00:56:16] That's great. Thank you so much. Over to the Embrace team, I'm wondering what message you might have first to women's sector advocates in your position about their relationship to law enforcement. You know, what kind of advice do you have or guidance you have to them? [00:56:34][18.1]
Speaker 1: [00:56:35] Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what I was speaking about at the very beginning of the podcast about how we are so tied to law enforcement and the criminal justice system and what we've been taught as advocates that we need to do. And one of those things is these coordinated community response teams. And there are tool kits for these teams and for these teams. And it all all leads to have close relationships with law enforcement, the district attorney's offices, all of the systems in criminal justice. That's how you're going to be successful in these teams and in your community. But what what if we took those pieces out of these cars and really made it more community based? So we're getting the input from the survivors that we're serving from other organizations who come in contact with survivors, with family and friends, teaching, you know, survivors or support networks how they can support a survivor as well so they don't have to come to a shelter. And really? Just how how can we do this without the system that's not working for survivors who are coming to us, but also how can we continue to support survivors who don't want their abuser to go to jail, who don't want their abuser, to leave their home, to leave their kids? How can we support people who are doing the harm to not do harm anymore so that they can stay as a family unit if they want to? Because leaving and breaking up a family isn't always the answer for everyone. [00:58:19][104.5]
Speaker 2: [00:58:21] It's it's not. And it's not almost anybody's first choice. First Choice is safety. Stronger family getting help from the father of my kids or the mother of my kids or whomever. And also just feels like you just like kids to everybody, our ally guide and our choose to change material, which is on our free available on our website, [00:58:40][19.4]
Speaker 1: [00:58:41] free on our website. And by the way, one of the things that we've done is we don't track the cookies on those. We want those to be 100 percent anonymous, anonymous for survivors and for people who are looking for behavior change. So, you know, we're going to encourage people to use the Choose to Change and the Ally guide to create an ecosystem of support, a holistic ecosystem of support around families because so many people do not engage themselves in formal services and also because so many people fail around that victim survivor to identify and recognize domestic abuse, coercive control and child abuse. And they mis identify it as mental health, addiction and behavioral issues, which have nothing to do with power and control. And so normalize it, and our systems are normalizing that for people as well. So, you know, you know, it just it warms my heart to hear that, you know, the professionals in this area really speaking there says the need because so much of the conversation that happens about the needs of survivors is not talked about by survivors, but people who believe that they are professionals and have better insight into survivors experiences and needs than survivors actually do. And it's incredibly damaging and incredibly harmful. So thank you, Brittany. Seriously. [01:00:11][90.0]
Speaker 2: [01:00:12] So we want to thank all our panelists for their participation today in this, this penultimate partner of this entire episode for 2020. So thank you all so much. We're going to move to wrapping up. We will. Oh, I was forgot any plug for our website. We'll put this on our shoulders as well. But for a website resource, Lee, again, I'll start with you. How do people find your books? [01:00:40][27.7]
Speaker 1: [01:00:43] The books are available in all of the independent bookstores that you go to. They're available on the large retailers that really don't need your support, and the latest book, Decriminalizing Domestic Violence, is available through the University of California Press. [01:00:56][13.9]
Speaker 3: [01:00:57] OK, there go. Is there any other contact information for you or anything else you want to? [01:01:02][4.2]
Speaker 1: [01:01:02] You can find me on the Maryland law website. So it's law. Dot U. Maryland Dot Edu, right? [01:01:10][8.2]
Speaker 3: [01:01:11] Thanks, Leigh and embrace. Do you have anything that you guys want to promote? So people here, they'll see this in the show notes as well, but anything else? [01:01:19][8.1]
Speaker 1: [01:01:20] Yeah. So we do have a website, it's embraced dot org and from there you can find all of our social media handles. We're pretty active on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, all those fun things. And we do have a go fund me to help support continuing services and just maintain that stability for, especially for the counties that have lost funding due to this. But again, just to maintain this ability, so survivors will continue to be supported through our agency, and you can find all that information on our social media as well. [01:01:49][29.4]
Speaker 2: [01:01:50] OK, thank you, Missy, Brittany and Alyssa from the Embrace Network. And thank you, Lee, and we are wrapping up here. This has been partnered with a survivor and you're smiling. [01:02:01][11.6]
Speaker 1: [01:02:02] I just I'm so happy by this conversation. This conversation really just gives me a lot of wind under my wing. Seriously. You know, it's difficult to feel alone in this, and I really wanted to contact embrace because I didn't want them to feel alone. I think as a survivor, that's probably one of those. The most dangerous places to be is to feel alone. So this is just wonderful. [01:02:27][25.1]
Speaker 2: [01:02:29] Yeah. So I'm David Mandel, executive director of the Singapore Together Institute, [01:02:32][3.3]
Speaker 1: [01:02:32] and I'm Ruth Jones Mandel, the e-learning and communications manager. [01:02:36][3.1]
Speaker 2: [01:02:36] And if you like this podcast, please share with other people. You can find this on all your favorite podcast platforms. And if you want to learn more about us, you can go to sleep together into dot com or go to our our virtual academy and academy stuff together in sitcom, and we have a discount code. [01:02:55][18.3]
Speaker 1: [01:02:55] Do we have a discount code? It's partnered all lowercase for our foundational courses. [01:02:59][4.2]
Speaker 2: [01:03:00] That's great. And so I think that's it. [01:03:03][2.5]
Speaker 1: [01:03:03] And we're out. We're out. [01:03:03][0.0]
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