Criminal Code Offence: Intimate Partner Violence
Debate Proposition: Canada should enact a new Criminal Code offence criminalizing coercive control to reduce and/or eliminate an “epidemic” of intimate partner violence in our communities.
The debate papers are research papers that aim to promote the development of a theoretically and/or legally and/or evidence-informed position about one controversial policy or practice associated with diversity and the Canadian criminal “justice” system. All topics are about inequity and various forms of prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and/or violence perceived and/or experienced by the members of select identity groups in interacting with the Canadian state and legal system, or measures that the federal and provincial/territorial governments have introduced or are proposing to protect specific identity groups from harm.
Content Requirements
Our fourth paper is about intimate partner violence targeting women, especially lethal violence, which several cities and the federal government have recently declared or recognized as a public health “epidemic” and where some advocates, mainly carceral feminists, are calling for the creation of a new criminal coercive control offence (a pattern of behaviours used to control a victim that may not meet the threshold for other existing criminal offences like assault or harassment) OR a new criminal femicide offence (deliberate killing of a woman or girl because of their gender) to more effectively address if not eliminate such violence.
The call for these new criminal offences has been motivated by different events in Canada including the ongoing disparate disappearances and murders of Indigenous women and girls and gender-diverse people; hate-inspired mass casualties events like the Minassian van attack and the Nova Scotia mass shooting; the jury recommendations from a coroners inquest into the 2015 Renfrew County triple homicides of Nathalie Warmerdam, Carol Culleton, and Anastasia Kuzyk; and, research and advocacy by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability including their 2023 report suggesting a post-pandemic increase in lethal intimate partner violence targeting women.
For those assigned to this paper, you will need to focus on ONE (only) of these two proposed criminal offences (either coercive control OR femicide) since the substance and rationale for each offence differ. On the opposing side, many non-carceral feminists reject the creation of more criminal offences since carceral approaches fail to address the systemic drivers of violence against women and girls and are likely to amplify the disparate criminalization of the members of already racialized and marginalized communities. As well, there is limited empirical evidence from other jurisdictions like the United Kingdom that enacting a coercive control or a femicide offence effectively reduces or eliminates intimate partner violence targeting women.
For our course, this debate relates to the lived perceptions and experiences of discrimination and violence by women, inclusively defined, which often intersect with Indigeneity/race/ethnicity and other aspects of identity, including abilities, as discussed across the course text; see especially Chapter 10 and the corresponding lecture; see also Chapters 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11. The debate involves various human rights, especially those relating to personal security, equality and non-discrimination, as well as Indigenous rights. In addition to using the course text and lectures, you must conduct some secondary research using the UFV Library search engines and the Internet (e.g., Google Scholar).
The debate papers require you to critically examine competing sides (arguments and evidence) to adopt and defend an informed position, either supporting or opposing the stated policy proposition (see the Diversity Paper Rubric which indicates how you might want to structure your paper). To come to an informed position, you must formulate at least one supporting legal and at least one opposing legal or empirical argument (organized into separate sections with headings) and mobilize and assess the applicable supporting evidence for each of the arguments. An informed opinion or position is just that; you reach a position by carefully examining and weighing the available arguments, applicable laws, and various types of evidence. Based on your informed position, you should offer two or more expert or research-informed or innovative recommendations for equity and (social) justice moving forward. In this regard, you should be attentive to parliamentary investigations and proposed legislative models in Canada like Bill C-332: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (controlling or coercive conduct).
