Early this year, New Jersey became the sixth state to enact a law that lets courts consider past history of abuse as a mitigating factor in sentencing for survivors of domestic violence.
Similar laws have passed in New York, Illinois, California, Oklahoma and Georgia. A bill is pending in Massachusetts, and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council has published its own version of this law for potential use by other states.
Can the same institutions that have historically discredited women’s claims of abuse now fairly decide which survivors are credible enough to deserve a second chance?
Advocacy for survivors’ justice laws emerged in 2009 after decades of research revealed that domestic violence, sexual violence and coercive control were significant contributing factors in crimes committed by abuse survivors, but were rarely considered at sentencing. Passing the laws was only the first step; whether these laws fulfill their promise depends on the people charged with applying them.
In 2024, I co-founded You Are Not Alone, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing how men understand and respond to violence against women. Through my work, I have spoken to countless abuse survivors, most of them women, seeking resentencing under these laws. One pattern has become almost impossible to ignore: Women can do everything asked of them by the criminal justice system yet still be treated as presumptively not credible.