Dual Charging Practices in Cases of Domestic Violence: Perpetuating (In)Equalities

Dual charging is intended to provide an equal, gender neutral approach to domestic violence by holding both violent parties liable for their behaviour. However, this practice appears to be problematic for battered women, as consideration is not given to the context or motivations behind their employment of force. In this thesis, I use a radical intersectional feminist approach to explore the issue of dual charging. By tracing the history of law reform in the area of violence against women, and examining previous research, I attempt to situate the problem of dual arrest in a broader perspective, in order to explore how the gendered impacts of domestic violence are resulting in inequalities for women in the form of dual charging.