Domestic Violence In Costa Rica Essay Research free essay sample

Domestic Violence In Costa Rica Essay, Research Paper Executive Summary Domestic force is a grave and composite job which has no easy solution, but it affects the full costarrican society. The precedences of todays establishments have a tought clip, seeking to observe, atend, prevent, and transform the socio-cultural spiels which have originated and perpetuate it. Violence against adult females compels all kind of phisical, sexual and psicological force in the household, force in the comunity and educational establishments, and female harlotry. Gender force includes a series of erudite values, beliefs and atitudes which were learned and are transmitted coevals to coevals, without any favoritism for societal, economic, educative, ethnicity, faith or ideological political relations. Violence manifests itself in many different ways harmonizing to the dinamics of the power relationship. The impact of force on the quality of life of people is deep and compels non merely physical harm, but besides emotional and psycological. The costs of domestic force are ever really high for the person and for the province. Furthermore, the negative impact on the quality of lives of womem becomes apparent through: adictions, self-destructions, frequent admitances to the psyquiatric wards, recurrent illnesss, low academic and working accomplishment, low personal satisfaction, etc. It is in this probe that this job will be analyzed from the point of position of the male wrongdoer. How is it that this work forces commit this Acts of the Apostless of force in their cyclical forms? If the male wrongdoers were stopped there would be no demand for this probe, therefore the key to the reply to halting domestic force in Costa Rica, should be to halt the work forces from hitting adult females before they commit any violent act. There will be besides an penetration on what is been done in other states to handle this job. Some recomendations to decide the struggle at the root are presented as good. Extension of the Problem In Costa Rica, force against adult females has taken on mean the lives of two adult females per month, in this decennary. However, this is merely a little statistic of the force that adult females endure mundane in CostaRica. On a intrafamiliar degree, in 1996, a survey on the urban public sentiment made by the Psycologial Investigation Institute of the UCR, for the INAMU, revealed that 36.3 % of the selected population knows a adult male who often batters his comrade, and that 21.4 % of the people of the urban scene knows a adult male who forces his married woman to holding sexual dealingss with him. A recent survey in the state for the United Nations Program for Development, shows how there has been a rise in the denouncing of domestic force in the many ofices around the state. The survey besides explains how in 1998 the Judicial Power has issued 21.000 requests for protection under the jurisprudence against Domestic Violence, while in 1997 these accounted for merely 15.336 for the whole state. A statistical analisis of the requests presented for domestic force, prepared by the Planning Office of the Judicial Power, indicates that due to the anual addition of these requests, ( 5000 more per twelvemonth ) in 1999 it will be expected to have 26.000 instances, which gives an norm of 2.150 requests per month, or 100 per working twenty-four hours. In June of 1999, the Fiscal a de Delitos Sexuales y Violencia Dom stica ( San Jos ) has taken 321 accusals, mentioning to domestic force and sexual offenses. This institute, which begun in January of 1998, atended this twelvemonth 655 instances of force. In bothe instances, la broad mayority of the victims were female. This twelvemonth, 8 adult females have already lost their lives to their hubbies, comrades, fellows and male parents. From january 1st, to may 19, 4652 registered calls were made to the Lets Break the Silence hotline ; 1733 adult females have been atended for by the Women+s Delegation and up tu April 30th, 307 adult females were looking for safety in the Home for the Battered Woman. In the working environment, it is apparent the rise in state of affairss of sexual harrasment harmonizing to the Defensor a de los Habitantes: in 1996 merely 17 instances were reported to this establishment, in 1997, 22 were reported and by 1998, 100 were accounted for. This is largely due to the widespread information available today provided by establishments and working environments. However, this Numberss merely reveal a little portion of the job of sexual harrasment. Psychological Analysis of the Causes of the Problem There are many theories about the psychological causes of banging, runing from intoxicant maltreatment, emphasis, hapless choler direction, and an opprobrious childhood. However, a more accurate image of the causes of buffeting demands to include the societal conditions that permit and even promote force against adult females: Such conditions include traditional sex functions that teach work forces to rule, and adult females to subject. Another societal status that promotes banging is our society # 8217 ; s usage of hierarchies, with the belief that every group, household or relationship should hold one individual in charge, and that individual has the right to utilize force to guarantee their power and control over others. Batterers frequently abuse adult females because: I. They choose to, in the same manner that they choose non to assail their foreman when they are angry, II. It works. They get what they want ( in the short-run ) : release of tenseness and submissive behaviour from others, III. They get off with it. If there are no negative effects such as constabularies collaring and filing charges, so the message is that force is acceptable. Many theories have been developed to explicate why some work forces use force against their spouses. These theories include: household disfunction, unequal communicating accomplishments, aggravation by adult females, emphasis, chemical dependence, deficiency of spiritualty and economic adversity. These issues may be associated with banging of adult females, but they are non the causes. Removing these associated factors will non stop work forces s force against adult females. The batterer begins and continues his behaviour because force is an effectual method for deriving and maintaining control over another individual and he normally does non endure inauspicious effects as a consequence of his behaviour. Historically, force against adult females has non been treated as a # 8220 ; existent # 8221 ; offense. This is apparent in the deficiency of terrible effects, such as captivity or economic punishments, for work forces guilty of buffeting their spouses. Rarely are batterers ostracized in their communities, even if they are known to hold physically assaulted their spouses. Batterers come from all groups and backgrounds, and from all personality profiles. However, some features fit a general profile of a batterer: + A batterer objectifies adult females. He does non see adult females as people. He does non esteem adult females as a group. Overall, he sees adult females as belongings or sexual objects. + A batterer has low self-prides and feels powerless and ineffective in the universe. He may look successful, but inside he feels inadequate. + A batterer externalizes the causes of his behaviour. He blames his force on fortunes such as emphasis, his spouse s behaviour, a # 8220 ; bad twenty-four hours, # 8221 ; intoxicant or other factors. + A batterer may be pleasant and capturing between periods of force, and is frequently seen as a # 8220 ; nice cat # 8221 ; to foreigners. Theory- Hypothesis The civilization of male force has been under sustained unfavorable judgment as neer before. Writers such as Anna Coote and Suzanne Moore have highlighted that non merely is most offense committed by work forces, but work forces are responsible for about all violent offense. However manifested, whether as route fury, random assaults in public topographic points and married woman whipping, force is perchance the most baneful male upset. There are agencies for assisting the violent tackle their force but these techniques are mostly ignored. Why? It might be assumed that that work forces who want to halt their force would be welcomed and assist made readily available to them. Not so, and the political inactiveness has a funny moral force ; a unusual confederation of machismo political relations and 2nd moving ridge feminism.The consequence # 8211 ; the entire demonization of such work forces # 8211 ; may ironically be forestalling any farther alteration in attitude towards work outing male force. It was non that domestic force was new, but in the past society s attitudes had merely been more ambivalent. In other states like Britain, the statistics paint a atrocious image: 45 per centum of adult females slaying victims are killed by present or former spouses ( compared to eight per centum of male victims ) . A one-fourth of adult females say they have experienced physical force from a spouse. In 68 per centum of incidents of domestic force, kids are in the same or following room, witnesses to the assault. A 3rd of kids present during an incident intervene to protect the female parent. The adult females s refuge motion has done a great trade to alter the public attitude to such force. It is now by and large accepted that it is neer the victim s mistake and that adult females should non stand by a violent adult male. Stoping the rhythm of force normally requires extremist action. Often adult females and kids have to travel out of their place to one of the several hundred safeties around the state. Sometimes, the constabularies have prosecuted violent work forces and the tribunals will allow injunctions to maintain violent work forces out of the place. In Costa Rica, this is non working really accurately, because the undertaking for the punishment of the Domestic Violence Law has been stuck in Congress for months with no true advancement. But what is being done to assist violent work forces who want to reform? Here the argument gets slippery. The prevalent attitude to all violent work forces is that they should be punished. If they need to be removed from society so be it. It is a point of position which at one degree is wholly right. But it has drawbacks. Prison may direct a strong warning to violent work forces but in practical footings, all the grounds is that the prison system is one of the most violent and brutalising environments and merely reinforces aggressive behavior. The deviated behavior that he learned when immature, will merely turn more accentuated in gaol and likely in this point, it would be really difficult for him to of all time travel back to populating a non-violent life. It is besides of import non to chunk all me N s force together because persons are involved and instances vary. The other inexplicit portion of the statement is that violent work forces should halt. But many work forces do non hold the emotional equipment to be able to command force without expert aid. There are comparings with the jobs nuts have in interrupting their forms of behavior. To do people halt, some deep material normally needs to be addressed by the person. It is here we come to the funny instance of political inactivity. There is a good trade of noisy bluff but small is really done on any forepart to undertake male force. In the current tough on offense political clime politicians exhibit old fashioned political machismo. While we all say we hate force we largely admire the difficult adult male. This might be the difficult work forces ( and adult females ) of political relations. Understanding or empathy is non portion of the entreaty. Policemans who take on violent felons are seen as a hardmen, because of their u sage of force with them. Covering in understanding or empathy with the felon is seen as weak. Yet the overall consequence is to reenforce and, in consequence, condone male force. A funny ingredient is that much of the argument over domestic force has been driven by a strand of feminist activism that traces its roots back to the all work forces are rapers dictum. While the statements have got more sophisticated, that remains the underlying nucleus and the tone remains inflexible. The confederation of these two seemingly improbable thoughts, that all work forces are assholes and that wrongdoers must be dealt with in a tough mode. But is is besides this confederation of positions that in the instance of male force prevents a proper model for supplying aid. Proposing that violent work forces may necessitate aid seems every bit popular as recommending eugenics. Feminists intelligibly take a really difficult line on work forces who do perpetrate domestic force. However the difficult line in itself has non brought about alteration in male behavior. Possibly now is the clip to reexamine our stance and the proviso of reding to violent work forces. Prosecution may show society s abomination of such behaviors but it does no more to halt the tide of domestic force than it does to halt burglary or other offenses. Much of male force is self-generated, and most governments agree that deep-rooted choler is at the bosom of it. Violence may be scaring and used to command but frequently it is form of emotional illiteracy. The culprit has small insight into the deep sitting grounds behind his usage of force. Can work forces alter their violent behavior? InBritain, a smattering of voluntary sector administrations have devised curative classs to assist violent work forces. The best known is likely the Everyman Centre in Brixton but that has been scaled down because of fiscal jobs. Over 300 work forces have gone through the Centre. The classs developed out of choler direction techniques pioneered in the United States. Violent work forces have trouble articulating and showing feeling and emotion even to themselves and this badly limits their ability to sympathize with others. Men s emotional spectrum is really limited and in add-on they are incognizant of feeling or emotion unless it is intense and frequently utmost. Men drop out of the class along the manner and of the work forces that successfully finish, it does non automatically follow that they are cured. Some have re-occurrences during the class and some afterwards. These classs are still controversial. Even in England, the pro-feminist position and the adult females s refuge motion position is highly doubting and wary. Such strategies, they say, should be accountable to adult females and must be seen as secondary to the work of adult females s safeties. The traditional attack is practised more within the prison or mental wellness sectors and works on the rule that work forces can treated as persons. One frequent unfavorable judgment is that there is no manner of measuring how effectual these classs are. Work force should be encouraged to to take duty for their behavior and helped to recognize that their demand to command stems from sexist outlooks endorsed by society: Arresting and bear downing violent work forces delivers a powerful message to society that assailing a adult females in the place is every bit serious as an assault on a alien. ( INAMU ) In analogue to the voluntary sector, American-style choler direction is used in covering with wrongdoers in the populace sector. A violent wrongdoer is referred to the probation service who either have their ain classs or direct the wrongdoer on a class run by the local mental wellness trust. The NHS in the West Country has been at the head of this development. Mike Hennessy, a clinical psychologist with the Dorset Community Health Trust in Dorchester, has been giving single one-to-one choler direction reding for nine old ages and trades with all signifiers of force. He sees 80 per centum work forces and 20 per centum adult females. To be effectual, anger direction classs need to be tightly monitored and accountable in the wider sense. Even if each class has less than a 100 per centum success rate they are still undertaking one of the most hard issues of our times # 8211 ; work forces and their emotions. A societal worker for the CCSS in Costa Rica, Mercedes Chac N, argues If a adult male who has a long history of force, crushing up spouses, a record for violent offenses, comes to our class and either Michigans force for periods or reduces his force that is a major success. Of class we would wish him to halt wholly but, realistically, if in the class of a few hebdomads we can step in against the form of behavior built up over a life clip, bearing in head that these people are populating in a violent society, so that is a major accomplishment. I believe that if we attack the job from the clip they are striplings, we can hold higher chances for that adult male non to show his violent character in a ulterior clip. If male force is the greatest menace to the stableness of society so it would be reasonable to assist any adult male who earnestly wants to halt his force. But machismo has such a deep entreaty in the Costarican society: it is as though one can are barely be witting of it allow entirely in a place to dispute it. There is no grounds of the political procedure being able to turn to the issue. The being of a booming web of groups in England like Everyman Centre in Brixton would direct out a strong signal that male force is unacceptable and that there are options. Demonizing and further dehumanizing work forces will non alter a society already terrorised by male force Decisions After carry oning this probe, one can trully detect how the domestic job in this state is really existent and terrorization. The statistics presented by the INAMU, can really good frighten the adult females and work forces of the age bracket ( 20-45 ) because it is where most of the victims and wrongdoers lie in. Most work forces who batter adult females are their hubbies, so that leaves the community a bad sense of the word matrimony. The root of the job resides in the male thought that force is a manner to work out their jobs. In our society, males are taught implicitly to be strong against their jobs, but it does non learn the person non to utilize force as a manner to work out matrimonial jobs or domestic jobs. This is where the false belief lies on. Many work forces believe that if force solves jobs in their external lives, they can besides utilize this tool to work out internal life jobs. In Costa Rica, much of the work that is being done to command male force in the adult male himself is done by societal workers at countrywide infirmaries. When the adult female comes all hitter up by the hubby, to the infirmary, inmediately she is assigned to a societal worker to seek to work out her job. But the societal worker, in Costa Rica, tries to assist non merely her, but besides the hubby or comrade if he is willing to take part in the curative Sessionss in the infirmary. This is where the true solution to our states crisis is. The solution is to assist these societal actions in the infirmaries to accomplish their ends efficaciously and expeditiously. In these infirmaries atention to domestic force has grown integrally: socially, lawfully and in wellness for the beat-up adult female. This is the manner to make it because an wrongdoer without intervention will go on to be an wrongdoer for the remainder of his life. Ms.Chacon was saying that from all the instances she has had in Puntarenas, merely five out of 20 domestic force instances have had some advancement and this is due to the willingness of the adult male to acquire some aid from her and go to the meetings as a twosome. The others have non made advancement because either the adult male is now in gaol or is dead or continues buffeting the adult female. ( She is excessively submissive and is non believing ) Violence is ciclical. Everyone carries some kind of choler inside, but these work forces do non cognize how to show it. Their behaviors are deviated because at a immature age their forms of force were neer corrected or even obstructed. Violence is a type of behaviour that is learned through life. No 1 is born violent, society alterations them to be this manner. The domestic force jobs in this society resides in that every male kid is taught straight or indirectly to utilize certain sum of force to work out their jobs, even if it has to be in the place. Because it is one of the city manager myths of this society that, El hombre debe imponerse parity mantener el orden nut La casa. ( even if it means violently ) There is no establishment for assisting violent work forces who wish to pull off their choler. There is a large spread in the system of seeking to halt male force in the place, and it lies inside male heads, behaviours and personalities. This group is been left out of the solution image in Costa Rica, at the clip when the job keeps acquiring worse every twelvemonth. The societal workers for infirmaries are seeking to work out the jobs from the root, but it is really unsafe for them, because they lack the resources and the security to work with these violent work forces. They need to be better funded. An establishment is really greatly needed in this docket. The INAMU used to be an establishment for the full household, but now all the regional and chief offices are merely dedicated to seeking to work out adult females problems. Men need assist, and they can non happen it. They are non acquiring the support they need to acquire. If the job is non cut from the root, it will still mainta in coming back, even if all work forces were sent to gaol.