Joint submission to the Department of Justice
Rise Women’s Legal Centre and West Coast LEAF have made a joint submission to the Department of Justice as it considers establishing a new Criminal Code offence for coercive control in the context of intimate relationships.
Coercive control is a pattern of behaviour used by an abusive person to control and harm another person. The pattern of behaviour can include acts of violence, psychological intimidation, threats, humiliation, and financial or property abuse. Coercive control, especially when non-physical is often minimized within the legal system and treated as less serious.
Rise and West Coast LEAF’s submissions seek to inform the conversation around the potential criminalization of coercive control by sharing our experiences with addressing coercive control within the context of family law in BC, where a range of psychological and emotional violence has been included in legislation for nearly a decade, with disappointing results.
Our joint submission encourages the Department of Justice to consider the ways family law, family policing, and criminal law have interfaced with coercive control in BC and demonstrates that legislative changes alone will not provide safety for survivors. Criminalizing coercive control may assist in sending a message to society that these coercive and controlling behaviors are a serious form of violence deserving of strong sanction. However, the BC context demonstrates that legislative changes alone do not meaningfully tackle this behaviour and that robust education on coercive control within the legal system, social supports and services for survivors, as well as a careful multi-system approach is needed to create meaningful safety for survivors.
We make several recommendations to the Department of Justice, including:
Prioritizing survivors of coercive control at the center of any and all consultation and legislation including before any changes to legislation are finalized.
Building preventive measures and social supports that increase safety for survivors while they engage in the legal system, which includes a significant investment in the training of law enforcement and legal system actors. Education about the seriousness of coercive control is needed as this complex social phenomenon is often minimized or ignored.
If the federal government decides to move forward with the criminalization of coercive control, we recommend following the model of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, which is considered the gold standard, in part, because it focuses on the behaviors of the accused person and limits the burden placed on survivors by not requiring the prosecution to prove actual harm.
Read Rise’s 2021, Why Can’t Everyone Just Get Along, for more information about how coercive control, and other forms of family violence, are impacting women navigating the family legal system.