Systemic Oppression and Relational Harm: Toward an Anti-Carceral Approach to Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive phenomenon in the United States that leads to a number of negative downstream consequences for individuals. Yet, the dominant response to IPV remains rooted in a carceral criminal justice system. We argue that a carceral response to IPV reproduces and upholds systems of oppression, disrupts healthy relationship functioning, and embeds carceral logics into IPV research and practice. We present recommendations that might advance an anti-carceral approach that fundamentally reimagines how we understand and address IPV. An anti-carceral approach requires shifting from a model that criminalizes individuals to one that interrogates the structural conditions that enable relational harm. Such an approach has the potential to improve the lives of individuals who are or have been affected by IPV as well as by the systems of oppression upheld by a carceral system.