Abstract

PERCEPTIONS OF WOMEN’S VICTIM OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE IN SASKATCHEWAN ON THE JUSTICE SYSTEM: A RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

Carmen Gill

During the last year I have been involved in a Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) led by Leslie Tutty from the University of Calgary and Jane Ursel from the University of Manitoba. The research project aims to assess the efficacy of a variety of law enforcement, justice and community responses to intimate partner violence. It is focusing on three major systems: the justice system response, the civil legislation to protect victims of domestic violence and the collateral agency response. My role in the research team is specifically to lead a component of the research project in Saskatchewan: women’s experience within the justice system. An important element in evaluating the justice response is interviewing those who have experienced aspects of this system, especially with respect to the extent to which their safety was established and whether they were prevented from being revictimized. Evaluating the justice system command to take women’s experience and perception into account. This process is occurring in Alberta, Manitoba as well as in Saskatchewan. Using largely similar questionnaires we are conducting individual interviews with women who have been through the justice system since 1997 in major cities of the Prairie Provinces. This presentation will focus on the interview process started in Regina in June 2002. I will present the analytical grid and how the research team has developed the plan of analysis. I will discuss my first impressions about the women’s perceptions of the justice system in Saskatchewan placing them in perspective with other research done over the last decade.

Bio

Carmen Gill, Ph.D. is a Research Associate at the Social Policy Research Unit, University of Regina. Her current research interests are centred on social economy initiatives, especially those of the women’s movement, and on the dynamics involved between the State and community-based organizations. She is co-investigator on the research project Social Partnership and Public Policy: A Study of Two Roundtables as well as in a Community University Research Alliance (CURA) project: Evaluating the Justice and Community Response to Domestic Violence in the Prairie Provinces.

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