The Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal published an article in 2002 which noted that up to 80 percent of women sentenced under the measure 11 statute were victims of domestic violence who fought back at their abusers. The women typically resorted to drastic measures as a last resort, after law enforcement failed, and only when their lives had been threatened or their children were in danger.
This may also account for the low recidivism rate in Oregon. There is virtually a 0 percent recidivism rate among women who have finally killed an abuser to escape. Zero. Most states don’t incarcerate these women, and the fact that Oregon does skews the statistics. It doesn’t point to successful rehabilitation so much as it highlights the fact that these people don’t belong in prison in the first place.
Thomas Jefferson said “Self defense is the most fundamental right upon which the rest of the constitution rests.” Malcolm said “Self-defense isn’t violence, it’s intelligence.”
Recently there has been a lot of public debate about a teacher in Medford who carried a concealed weapon to school after her ex-husband, who had previously violated a restraining order, threatened to kill her. Many of the editorial comments centered on whether the teacher should leave her job to protect her students, “at least until the danger is over” (And when might that be? Over 1500 women and children are killed every year in circumstances similar to these.)
It was never even noted that the obvious solution was to imprison the man who threatened to kill his family, thereby putting the blame on the perpetrator, and not harming his victim with the loss of her job or living in constant fear for her safety. That would ensure her pupils’ safety as well. But men who batter are not made to shoulder responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Consequently, society tacitly tolerates battering and strangulation and terroristic threatening. Too frequently society shifts this burden to the women and children the batters terrorize.
The costs of NOT removing men who strangle their partners is ultimately far greater than the cost of enforcing a felony definition of strangling. There is always an emotional toll on the children forced to live in a concentration camp-mentality. Many of these children, suffer from severe PTSD, and statistically many will perpetuate the learned behaviors without serious intervention and counseling. Sometimes, the cost escalates weeks or months later, when the victim protects themselves with a weapon, after the State failed to protect them, and the state then pays to prosecute and incarcerate the (usually female) survivor. Calculate the cost of incarcerating someone for ten to twenty years and measure that against the cost of enforcing a felony strangulation law. Calculate the cost of special ed and therapy for the kids. And how do you measure up the generational costs of the kids who repeat the violent patterns they see in their own homes?
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