How Surrogate Impact Panels Function in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence: A Mixed-Methods Study

ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) continues to be an urgent social problem, despite decades of intervention and prevention efforts. Restorative justice programs (e.g., victim impact panels) may be a useful addition to intimate partner violence (IPV) intervention, but it is unclear how these panels operate and to what extent they are consistent with restorative justice models. This naturalistic study of IPV surrogate impact panels used ethnographic observation of panels (n = 18), archival analysis of audience responses to the panel (N = 287), and focus groups and interviews (k = 4) with IPV survivors, an audience member, and batterer intervention providers to investigate these gaps. Findings suggest the panels manifest interactional processes consistent with restorative justice principles. Implications, limitations, and future aims of research on these panels are discussed.     

State crises and the crackdown on crime under Reagan

This article explores the United States' crackdown on crime in light of other state agency policy shifts under the Reagan administration, such as those affecting the poor, the unemployed, the rich, and the corporate world. Actions across these realms manifest continuity, as identified through the investigation of the state's duel roles of accumulation and legitimation. The fiscal and legitimation crises that develop corollary to state functioning in advanced capitalistic societies are drawn upon to interpret the creation of a new crime problem and get tough response across the United States over the 1980s. Different state policy directions are discussed as they have operated for the accumulation of the few at the expense of exacerbated inequality and injustice for all. Conclusions suggest that such developments hold the potential to call forth new callenges and change.