Criminalizing Survivors of Domestic and Gender-Based Violence
NYC Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence
In the United States, 1 in 4 women experience abuse during their lifetimes. Globally, the United Nations reports that up to 70% of women experience some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime (according to country data available).
The Mayor's Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) develops policies and programs, provides training and prevention education, conducts research and evaluations, performs community outreach, and operates the New York City Family Justice Centers. They collaborate with City agencies and community stakeholders to ensure access to inclusive services for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence (GBV). GBV can include intimate partner and family violence, elder abuse, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking.
How are survivors criminalized?
Survivors are often arrested and incarcerated by a criminal legal system that does not sufficiently acknowledge past experiences of abuse as mitigating factors for acts of survival and resistance. These acts include: self-defense, securing resources needed to live or to flee an abusive situation, migration, “failure to protect,” removing children from abusive people, and being coerced into engaging in illegal activity by an abuser. Survivors who are queer, transgender, gender-nonconforming, Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, immigrant, and undocumented are criminalized more frequently by a system that regularly denies their humanity and erases their experiences, especially experiences of violence.
Survivorship and criminalization overlap quite frequently for incarcerated women -- the ACLU reports that nearly 60% of people in women’s prison nationwide, and as many as 94% of some women’s prison populations have a history of physical or sexual abuse before being incarcerated. This national issue was also reflected in a New York State Department of Correctional and Community Services study, where 67% of women who were incarcerated for killing an individual were previously abused by that same individual, and 90% of incarcerated people at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women had survived sexual violence in their lives.
Get Free and Confidential Assistance
Help is available for those experiencing DV/GBV in NYC. NYC HOPE portal is an online directory of resources and services available across all 5 boroughs. Learn more here.