Abstract:
Despite the pervasiveness of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Canada, research examining IPV in the context of Asian Canadians is scarce. Our study examined whether and how Canadian judges consider culture when determining a sentence in IPV cases involving an Asian offender and/or an Asian victim. We systematically searched for publicly published cases through CanLII. A total of 50 cases met the inclusion criteria. Cultural themes were identified using a direct content analysis approach to capture a priori themes in the literature, as well as identify any other factors considered. Our findings indicated culture was most often considered in only a superficial way (n = 31, 62.0%), where judges only made statements that simply identified the ethnicity of the offender and not how culture may have impacted the case. When examining cases where culture was meaningfully considered there were no prominent culture themes identified (all themes present in <14% of cases). We suggest this may not only reflect the heterogeneity of Asian Canadians, but could also reflect the lack of cultural consideration by the judges. Cultural factors were also rarely considered explicitly as an aggravating or mitigating factor in a case (n = 2; 4.0% and n = 7; 14.0% of the total sample, respectively). The findings reveal the current lack of meaningful consideration of culture in IPV legal cases involving Asian Canadians. We outline how this contrasts the increased attention to the meaningful consideration of culture in the Canadian legal arena and prompt all professionals involved in assessing and managing IPV risk to consider racial, ethnic, and cultural factors in these cases.
摘要:
尽管亲密伴侣暴力(IPV)在加拿大普遍存在,在亚裔加拿大人的背景下研究IPV的研究很少。我们的研究调查了加拿大法官在涉及亚洲罪犯和/或亚洲受害者的IPV案件中确定判决时是否以及如何考虑文化。我们通过CanLII系统地搜索了公开发表的病例。共有50例符合纳入标准。文化主题是使用直接的内容分析方法来捕捉文学中的先验主题,以及确定考虑的任何其他因素。我们的发现表明,文化最常被认为只是肤浅的方式(n=31,62.0%),法官只陈述了简单地确定罪犯的种族,而不是文化如何影响案件。在研究有意义地考虑文化的案例时,没有确定突出的文化主题(所有主题都出现在<14%的案例中)。我们认为这可能不仅反映了亚裔加拿大人的异质性,但也可以反映出法官缺乏文化考虑。在一个案例中,文化因素也很少被明确地认为是加重或缓解因素(n=2;4.0%和n=7;总样本的14.0%,分别)。调查结果表明,在涉及亚裔加拿大人的IPV法律案件中,目前缺乏对文化的有意义的考虑。我们概述了这如何对比加拿大法律领域对文化的有意义考虑的日益关注,并促使所有参与评估和管理IPV风险的专业人士考虑种族,民族,和文化因素在这些情况下。