Race, Poverty, and the Crime-Centered Response to Domestic Violence

Linda Mills (2003) criticizes our current crime-centered approach to domestic violence. I share her concern that this approach is harmful for women (or at least, for some women). I disagree, however, with Mills’s analysis and with the reform proposal that flows from that analysis. As I describe in this essay, Mills focuses mostly on psychological harms rather than material and social conditions. The result is to diminish the importance of power in understanding the phenomenon of domestic violence, the political position of the battered women’s movement, and the design of an appropriate response.