A Model of Intra-Systemic Coercion and Control: How Power Compounds across Systems to Foreclose Legal Pathways for IPV Survivors

Jackie Cosse, New York University Silver School of Social Work

This paper introduces an integrated theoretical framework that examines how coercion and control operate within and across systems to systematically restrict access to legal pathways of survival for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Three theories are utilized within this Model of Intra-Systemic Coercion and Control: coercive control theory (Stark, 2009), a formative IPV trauma theory accounting for coercion and control at the micro, individual level; social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), extended critically to examine how social bonds and networks at the mezzo level constrain survivors’ options and predict their involvement in activity deemed illegal by the state; and gender entrapment theory (Richie, 1996), a Black feminist legal theory that considers how compounding gender- and race-based subordination, alongside intimate partner violence, entraps Black women survivors into resorting to methods of survival criminalized by the state. With specific attention to the role of intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, this framework examines how power and control enacted at the individual/micro level through IPV is then compounded by social control at the societal/mezzo level, and then finally by state control at the macro level through the arrest and criminalization of IPV survivors. This analysis additionally situates these dynamics within the broader historical context of the U.S. criminal legal system, arguing that the criminalization of survivors is neither incidental nor accidental, but instead, is a function of carceral logics built into the architecture of the modern state. In doing so, this framework offers implications for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers committed to simultaneously reducing harm within existing criminal-legal systems while actively building survivor support outside of them.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 192. Violence, Gender, and Criminalization