Family Violence as State Crime: A new framework for theory, practice, and remedy

Abstract

Family violence is the most prevalent form of violence worldwide, and is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women and children. In recent years, Australia has been a leader in the global movement to give this problem the attention it deserves, including through the establishment of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. Yet in both mainstream and academic discourse, family violence continues to be understood through a narrow lens: framed as a problem of individual perpetrators and harmful cultural norms and attitudes. In these accounts, the historical, structural, and institutional dimensions of male violence in the family remain largely obscured. The notion of instituti..