One challenge we have, looking at the example of England and Scotland, is that in England, coercive control was criminalized in 2015. In Scotland, it was criminalized in 2018. The research coming out of both of those jurisdictions is that it has not had any significant impact on the rates of domestic abuse. One of the bigger challenges is securing convictions for coercive control, because that has been extremely challenging.
In fact, Scotland's model is seen as a gold standard, if a country has to choose to criminalize coercive control. Their coercive control-specific offence is seen as a gold standard of legislation on domestic violence.
However, a recent study coming out of Scotland that interviewed survivors reveals that many felt that the final sentence, in their case, did not reflect their whole experience. It found that in terms of psychological abuse and control, which is the biggest piece we are talking about today, the survivors' experience was that when the accused was sentenced, their experiences were never taken into full consideration by the court. Only a small aspect of the abuse that they endured was revealed during the trial.
I think that is at the crux of the challenge of thinking about criminalizing coercive control without changing the attitude of our justice system and the misogyny within the justice system.
This solution of criminalizing an offence might actually trigger a situation in which we will see survivors, like Maria in the story I shared with all of you, finding instead that it is they who are criminalized in the system and facing the challenge, instead of the real perpetrators actually facing the consequences and the accountability we want.