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The Plight of Crime Victims in Modern Society pp 161–176Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Victimhood of Battered Women: Psychological and Criminal Justice Perspectives

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Abstract

Let me begin this chapter with the following questions: 1. what are reasonable expectations that societies should have of their citizens regarding the reporting of crimes committed against them in private locations? 2. How can we balance state intervention on behalf of those citizens with protection of citizen’s privacy from state surveillance — a growing problem as we move into the age of a computer technology that appears ready to record and register our daily transactions? Let me suggest that this dilemma is enormously complex with severe consequences for a policy error in either direction. If states maximize the rights of citizen privacy within the home, problems associated with families in isolation, such as child abuse, wife assault, incest, and other issues of ‘family dysfunction’ are not amenable to correction by outside influence. If states maximize their ability to detect and intervene in such problems, then the risk of ‘Big Brother’ appears to be upon us, coincidently, arriving as 1984 approaches.

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Authors
  1. Donald G. Dutton
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Ezzat A. Fattah Ph.D. (Professor of Criminology) (Professor of Criminology)

Copyright information

© 1989 Ezzat A. Fattah

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Dutton, D.G. (1989). The Victimhood of Battered Women: Psychological and Criminal Justice Perspectives. In: Fattah, E.A. (eds) The Plight of Crime Victims in Modern Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20083-2_7

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