Jennifer Horgan: We must punish violent crimes but also help perpetrators to change

I don’t believe that people are born violent. Or, at least I believe that such people are very rare. I also know for certain that the childhood experience plays a huge role in defining the adult.

Research released in The Lancet in 2017 found “that men who faced physical or sexual violence as children, and men who faced multiple types of child maltreatment, were even more likely to perpetrate violence later in life than men who experienced only emotional abuse or neglect”.

“The study further showed that men’s witnessing abuse of their mother was both directly and indirectly associated with physical intimate partner violence.”

The announcement of tougher sentencing laws for violence against women, delivered recently by Minister Helen McEntee, is good news when there seems to be little of it around. 

With the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence coming up on November 25, it’s one thing to celebrate.

But when male violence and, in particular, domestic violence is so hard to prosecute and police, is reacting to violence with tougher sentencing enough?

 International research on the effectiveness of lengthy imprisonment to prevent future crime is sketchy at best. So, what else should be done?

Prevention is one of the pillars of Ireland’s new Domestic Violence Act, and it is in this area that Professor Louise Crowley of UCC does most of her work. Not taking from the significance of Ireland’s stricter laws, which she describes as welcome and overdue, Crowley believes there is a danger of creating a revolving door, with men going back into the same relationship or new relationships to abuse again.

“We see it all the time. Women go back to abusive men because they love them; they just don’t want to be hurt by them. Often, a woman files for a barring order but it takes 14 days’ notice and a full hearing before it can be granted. Often, she changes her mind before the 14-day period is up, or doesn’t attend the hearing. Often, she goes back to him and the cycle starts again.”

Professor Crowley accepts that there may be some men beyond help, but contends that if there is even a possibility of changing a small percentage of the cohort, we should do whatever we can to facilitate that change. The academic, hugely involved in the prevention of male violence through her Bystander programme, is adamant that the area of prevention and rehabilitation is not getting enough attention.

“We must have a holistic approach. Some of these men will be dads forever. We need them to learn and we need to offer some possibility of change.”

She points out that judges here have the option of advising a perpetrator to complete a programme but in other jurisdictions these are mandatory.

'We must understand the behaviour to prevent it'

Research fellow at University of Limerick, Jane Mulcahy refers to a common saying in trauma circles: “You repeat what you don’t repair.”

“If we are putting all our eggs in the legal basket, we’re not going to get the necessary behaviour change that we need. We need a multi-modal, brain-aware, trauma-informed response to violence prevention. Violence is often an adaptive response to a very dangerous situation. This is not about excusing behaviour, not at all. But punishment can’t be our only answer. We must understand the behaviour to prevent it from happening again. No Feart in Scotland offers us an interesting example of a healing-centred approach, for instance.”

Mulcahy is also concerned with the pressures the new ‘tough on crime’ measures will have on an already stressed system, with garda recruitment at a low and prisons already beyond capacity.

“It costs roughly €80,000 to keep a person in prison for a year. We need to properly resource rehabilitation services and improve timely access to them. We need appropriate programmes in prisons and in the community. This is not about making excuses for appalling behaviour, it is about breaking the cycle.”

John Doyle, Director of Service with the Men’s Development Network, supports the zero tolerance approach and the tougher sentencing where appropriate but believes a good system includes both a custodial sentence and opportunities for change for men who show that willingness to change.

“These men will come out and often they will return to their partners. If there is no intervention, and the earlier the intervention the better, the cycle repeats. We offer services to men but also to their partners. We get the greatest feedback from partners who report back to us whether or not their home life has changed.”

The uncomfortable truth is that murderers and rapists are humans with human stories. We find it easier to consider mitigating circumstances for men who attack or kill their wives or partners in their home. We seem to feel some compassion for the perpetrators of murder/suicides because their humanness gets in the way. They are fathers and husbands and sons. For the random killers, it is easier to label them monsters. The truth is, the difficult truth, is that they are all human.

Until we get to the root causes of violence in the home and beyond it, get right into those messy human stories in the home and beyond it, gender-based violence will continue.

We must develop the capacity to simultaneously punish crimes and help perpetrators change.

Tougher sentencing is good but it is not good enough. We must not miss opportunities to prevent the most horrendous crimes from happening in the first place, or indeed, from happening again. And again. And again.

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.