Abstract
Contrary to contemporary narratives, there is consistent evidence that many men who perpetrate intimate partner violence (IPV) desist during their lifetime. However, our understanding of how and under what circumstances IPV desistance occurs is very limited. Considering the evidence that traditional interventions that aim to prevent IPV reoffending, such as protection orders, are not effective under all circumstances, it is unlikely that when IPV desistance does occur that it is attributable to the impact of external interventions in all cases.
IPV has an important dyadic component; many victims-survivors of IPV are in long-term and committed relationships with perpetrators and interact with their partners repeatedly over an extended period of time. As such, victims-survivors are in a unique position to both observe and identify the reasons for change in their partner’s abusive behaviours, as well as affect their partner’s behaviours through their actions and inactions. The current study aims to understand the potential role of female victims-survivors in the desistance of male-perpetrated IPV by conducting interviews with women who did and did not experience the desistance of abuse perpetrated against them.
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Notes
- 1.
The names of participants have been changed to protect their anonymity.
- 2.
I acknowledge that there are ongoing debates within the desistance literature regarding terms that label individuals as inherently ‘deviant’, such as ‘abuser’, ‘perpetrator’ and/or ‘offender’. In the broader desistance literature, some have argued that we need to move beyond terms which define and label people by the behaviours we wish them to desist from, noting that these terms are stigmatising and more ‘person-first’ language should be used. These critiques are acknowledged, but I have chosen to retain these terms, as they reflect the terminology employed by the women I interviewed and are commonly adopted in the feminist and IPV literature that has informed this thesis.
- 3.
The desistance literature emerged in response to increasing recognition that medical and specific deterrence explanations for the cessation of offending were unable to account for the majority of desistance. As Shadd Maruna argued:
This well-known fact that ‘they’ frequently do ‘come back’ after being ‘corrected’ or ‘deterred’ is precisely the reason both stories have been assigned a minor role in the scientific understanding of desistance. Although no-one believes that the state plays no role in the desistance process of ex-abusers, criminologists tend to look elsewhere, to forces like the labor market, to the family, and to the abuser himself or herself, to account for this highly-predictable change in behavior. (2001, p. 2)
- 4.
The victimology literature has consistently identified that the term ‘victims’ may not reflect the lived experiences of individuals who have experienced crime. However, ‘victims’ is used throughout this thesis to refer to individuals who have experienced crime as a broad category. Victims/survivors is used to refer to individuals who have lived experiences of IPV specifically.
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Boxall, H. (2023). Introduction. In: Reimagining Desistance from Male-Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32951-7_1
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