Risk, fear, harm : Immigrant women's perceptions of the policing solution to woman abuse

Over the last two decades in Canada, police intervention in woman abuse cases has become one of the primary responses to this form of violence against women. As a review of the literature reveals, however, very few studies have sought to examine women's perceptions of the "policing solution" to woman, and only a handful have explored the views of immigrant women. This is an unfortunate hiatus as studies indicate that criminal justice intervention in woman abuse cases can often bring in tow a multitude of harms to women who are socially and economically marginalized. As a step towards addressing this hiatus, this article reports on the perceptions held by forty-eight immigrant women about the "policing solution" to woman. The data were generated from focus group interviews that occurred in New Brunswick in the spring of 1997. Many of the women indicated that they held a number of fears about police intervention in woman abuse cases and they identified a myriad of forms of harm that could and often does occur pursuant to police involvement in such situations given immigrant women's socio-economic vulnerability. The concerns and feelings that the women expressed about police intervention mirror, at some level, many of the emotional responses and dynamics that arise for women when they experience woman abuse. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]