Battered Immigrant Women and the Police: A Canadian Perspective

Published date01 January 2022
Date01 January 2022
DOI10.1177/0306624X20986534
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20986534
International Journal of
Offender Therapy and
Comparative Criminology
2022, Vol. 66(1) 50 –69
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20986534
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijo
Article
Battered Immigrant Women
and the Police: A Canadian
Perspective
Amanda Couture-Carron1, Arshia U. Zaidi2,
and Nawal H. Ammar1
Abstract
Since the 1970s, the state response to intimate partner violence (IPV) has increasingly
become one of criminalization—particularly police intervention. Little is known,
however, about marginalized women’s experiences with the police within a context
of intimate partner violence in Canada. Drawing on interviews with 90 battered
immigrant women, this study examines which women contact the police, why some
do not, and what characterizes their experiences when the police are involved in
an IPV incident. This study demonstrates that while the women who called the
police were demographically similar to those who did not call, the women who
called reported much greater levels of physical abuse. Findings indicate that general
fear of the police and fear of police being racist or culturally insensitive continue to
be important reasons why women do not call the police. Notably, the majority of
women who had contact with the police reported the encounter as positive.
Keywords
intimate partner violence, police, immigrant women, criminal justice, Canada
Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the state response to outcries against inaction
toward intimate partner violence (IPV) was one of police intervention and criminaliza-
tion (Berman et al., 2009; McGillivray, 1999). By the early 1980s all provinces in
Canada implemented zero-tolerance policies that supported mandatory charging in
IPV cases (McGillivray, 1999; Salvaggio, 2002). As a result, it is no surprise that
1Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA
2University of Ontario Institute of Technology (Ontario Tech University), Oshawa, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Amanda Couture-Carron, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rowan University, 201 Mullica Hill
Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028-1700, USA.
Email: CoutureCarron@rowan.edu
986534IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X20986534International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyCouture-Carron et al.
research-article2021
Couture-Carron et al. 51
police intervention is a primary response to IPV. Social divisions along lines of class,
race, gender, ethnicity, and so forth, however, impact relationships between the police
and certain groups within a society (Wachholz & Midema, 2000). As a result, the
social location of battered women influences their experiences with police interven-
tion (Salvaggio, 2002).
One relevant factor of a woman’s social location is her citizenship/immigration
status. Immigrant women occupy a unique social position stemming from their rela-
tionship to the state and consequent vulnerabilities (Barrett et al., 2011). Despite rep-
resenting 21% of Canada’s population of women (Hudon, 2015), little is known about
who the immigrant women are who call the police or about battered immigrant wom-
en’s encounters with the police (Barrett et al., 2011; Hyman et al., 2006; Wachholz &
Miedema, 2000). The current study begins to address this void by exploring who calls
the police in response to an IPV incident, why some women do not call the police,
what characterizes battered immigrant women’s encounter when the police are
involved in the Canadian context. This line of research is essential for (1) uncovering
barriers to immigrant women seeking assistance from police—particularly important
in a national context where police intervention is a primary response to IPV—and (2)
understanding battered immigrant women’s encounters with the police in Canada.
Criminalization of Intimate Partner Violence
Historically, Canadian society– along with other western nations—largely ignored and
relegated IPV to the private sphere (McGillivray, 1999). Until the 1960s and early
1970s, IPV was not seen as an issue warranting criminal justice intervention (Liang
et al., 2005; McGillivray, 1999). In the early 1990s a number of groups brought IPV
into the public sphere (Liang et al., 2005) and called for its criminalization (McGillivray,
1999). Currently, police are required to lay charges where there is “reasonable and
probable grounds to believe that an assault had taken place” and crown attorneys
(Canadian prosecutors) are required to prosecute all cases where there is enough evi-
dence to do so (Di Luca et al., 2003, p. 10). In other words, when there is reason to
believe a physical assault took place, police do not have any discretion in how to
respond to the incident, they must lay charges. Police may also lay other types of
charges when applicable (e.g., if there is evidence of harassment or other crimes), but
laying such charges are not policy mandated as they are for physical assaults. As a
result, police intervention has become the primary social response to intimate partner
abuse in Canada (Waccholz & Miedema, 2000) with the belief that such an approach
benefits all women (Singh, 2010).
The advantages and disadvantages of mandatory charging and “no drop” policies
are beyond the scope of this paper. However, the critique of the notion that these poli-
cies benefit all women is particularly relevant to the paper. Individuals’ social posi-
tioning stemming from race, class, gender, ethnicity, and immigration status shapes
their interactions with the police (Wachholz & Midema, 2000). As mentioned earlier,
immigrants have a unique relationship to the state and the police are agents of the state
(Barrett et al., 2011). Immigrants also have vulnerabilities and concerns related to their

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