Mapping Coercive Violence

Introduction

Millions of people in the United States are impacted by intimate partner violence each year (Smith et al., 2017). Although all categories of people can and do experience intimate partner violence, intimate partner violence is gendered: the vast majority, especially physical abuse, sexual abuse, and financial abuse, is perpetrated by men against women. And, those with more marginalized identities—Black and Native women (BIPOC), poor women, and those who identify in the LGBTQ + community—face even higher risks for being victimized by their intimate or ex-intimate partners (Smith et al., 2017). Feminist scholars and activists have long focused our attention on the roots of intimate partner violence, arguing that it is not individual—bad behavior perpetrated by a few angry men—it is structural and deeply rooted in heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and modern capitalism (De Coster & Heimer, 2021; Hattery, 2022; Sweet, 2020).

Evidence for the feminist conceptualization of intimate partner violence as structural rather than individual is found in the remarkable stability of intimate partner violence; intimate partner violence has always existed as part of the human condition, and it looks remarkably similar across time and space (Hattery et al., 2016/2019). That being said, not only have scholars continued to refine our understandings of intimate partner violence by distinguishing among specific types of violence such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and financial abuse (Barnett et a., 2011); intimate partner violence is also adaptable and new forms of violence emerge in the changing conditions of social, political, and economic landscapes. In this paper, we posit a new form of intimate partner violence and that we term “coercive violence.” We argue that though it has always existed in some form, it has, like many phenomena, become visible as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic. We begin by defining and distinguishing coercive violence from coercive control; next, we provide examples of coercive violence in a variety of settings including health care, the welfare system, and the criminal legal system, and we conclude with policy implications and suggestions for future research.

Intimate Partner Violence in the United States

Intimate partner violence is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of behaviors; it takes many forms, including physical, emotional, psychological, financial, and sexual abuse (Barnett et al., 2011; Hattery & Smith, 2019). The prevalence of intimate partner violence in the United States is defined as a major public health crisis (Montesanti & Thurston, 2015). According to the Centers for Disease Control (Smith et al., 2017), 1 in 5 women (nearly 20%) and 1 in 7 men (14%) have experienced severe physical violence perpetrated by a partner, 1 in 5 women (20%) and 1 in 12 men (8.3%) have experienced sexual violence by a partner, and 10% of women and 2% of men have been stalked by an intimate or ex-intimate partner. Intimate partner violence can also take the form of teen dating violence (Smith et al., 2017). At its most extreme form, physical violence results in death; intimate partner violence accounts for 9% of all homicides, with women being the primary victims. Annually, in the United States, nearly 1,500 women are killed each year by their intimate or ex-intimate partners, and intimate partner violence homicide now accounts for 60% of all femicides (Smith et al., 2017).

In the United States, the history of research and activism focused on intimate partner violence can be characterized as a process of scholars and practitioners continuing to theorize distinct forms of intimate partner violence and expand the definition. Initially, and perhaps not surprisingly, the early “shelter” movement and feminist consciousness raising groups of the 1970s focused their attention on physical violence. Their focus solely on physical violence was likely the result of the fact that it is the most recognizable and in the majority of instances in which victim/survivors seek help it is in response to experiencing severe physical violence. It is also one of the two types of intimate partner violence that violates the law. Sexual violence was also a significant concern for early activists and scholars who led the way in conceptualizing marital rape as a form of intimate partner violence. And, though rarely prosecuted, by the mid-1980s, their work led to the repealing of the marital rape exemption in all 50 states. Activists who worked in shelters furthered our understanding of intimate partner violence by expanding the definition to include emotional and psychological abuse. As researchers and activists have documented, emotional and/or psychological abuse is the most common form of abuse, in part because it is utilized as a primary strategy of the control that characterizes intimate terrorism (Johnson & Leone, 2005; Hattery, 2008; Hattery & Smith, 2019). And, its impact on the mental health of victim/survivors is well documented, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2003). Another form of psychological abuse is gaslighting. Gaslighting involves an abusive partner using manipulation and distraction tactics to distort the truth in an attempt to undermine a victim/survivor's judgment and perceptions of reality, making them question their own sanity (Sweet, 2019, 2021). Gaslighting can have long-term consequences for victims.

More recently, scholars and activists pointed to yet another tool that many abusive men use to control their partners: financial abuse. As is well documented, many victims/survivors of intimate partner violence are prohibited by their partners from working (Hattery and Smith, 2019; Sable et al., 1999). Among those who are allowed to work, many women are required by their partners to “turn over” their earnings or they find when they go to withdraw money at the ATM that their partner has drained the account. Financial abuse often involves giving victims/survivors an “allowance”; commonly, women are denied access to bank accounts, credit cards, and even their own credit (Hattery and Smith, 2019).

One of the core elements of power and control in abusive relationships is the use of surveillance techniques by abusers to monitor the whereabouts of their partners. Though surveillance has always been a core strategy that abusers employ to control their partners, by the late 1990s and early 2000s, new technologies including cell phones and the internet became available and abusers engaged these tools to expand their reach and the impact of their control. These behaviors came to be defined as a distinct form of intimate partner violence known as “stalking.” The National Stalking Resource Center catalogs the myriad ways in which stalking can be accomplished and the types of tools that abusers have literally at their fingertips to put tracking devices into their partners’ phones, computers, and any other device, like a fitbit, that connects to the internet. They can install software that captures keystrokes, allowing them to read text messages and emails in real time and surveil web activity. Cyber-stalking has become a common and powerful tool in the arsenal of control.

Just as the advent of the widespread use of technology in the 1990s and early 2000s called for formally defining surveillance or “stalking” as a distinct form of intimate partner violence, the 2020 Global COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated another form of intimate partner violence that we argue is distinct: coercive violence. Similar to all of the other evolutions in the language used to define intimate partner violence, coercive control has always been part of the formula for abusive men to control their partners; yet, we argue that the naming of these strategies and patterns of abuse as a distinct form of violence is important for several reasons.

First, the term coercive violence, though it often involves other forms of abuse including emotional and financial abuse, is distinct from these other forms of violence. Second, coercive violence is a strategy that abusers use in order to divert various forms of surveillance and state violence away from themselves and toward their partners. And, third, because coercive violence is an extension of state surveillance, it disproportionately impacts the most marginalized, those individuals already most subjected to state surveillance and violence, including minorities and those living in poverty.

Scholars and activists have long understood the role that coercion and coercive behavior plays in intimate partner violence. It is such an important and powerful strategy that it appears prominently on the power and control wheel. That being said, we argue that coercion as a strategy is distinct from coercive violence. Coercive violence is not a strategy or a means to an end, it is violence in and of itself.

The State

As we and others have argued, though individual people perpetrate violence, the state often sanctions that violence and/or requires that individuals act as agents of the state. For example, we (Hattery & Smith, 2018/2021) argue that police killings of unarmed Black people are an example of state sanctioned violence in which individual police officers are acting as agents of the state. The War on Drugs, a thinly disguised War on Black people, defines Black people as the enemy of the state. Thus, when they are killed by police officers, or their surrogates, the violence is not only condoned, it is in fact defined as “doing one's job,” similar to the work that US soldiers do when they kill enemy combatants in a war zone in far-off places like Iraq or Afghanistan. As long as the killing complied with the “rules of engagement,” it is legal and soldiers are not tried for homicide. Similarly, when police officers kill unarmed Black people who they perceive as threats to the state, they are rarely tried for homicide nor are they held accountable in any meaningful way (Hattery & Smith, 2018/2021).

Similarly, across the first 400-plus year history of the United States, intimate partner violence has been conceptualized by some scholars as state sanctioned violence (Hattery & Smith, 2018/2021; Trent, 1979). Much like the soldier or the police officer who engages in state-sanctioned violence in order to protect the citizenry, husbands were charged with not only the care and support of their wives, but also with ensuring that they behaved “properly.” As such, it was legal for men to “discipline” their wives, even if this included or required physical violence. The roots of heteropatriarchy are laid bare by these laws; if women were found to have engaged in violence against their husbands, it was deemed an act of treason, the killing of a full citizen (Hattery and Smith, 2019).

In addition to state-sanctioned violence that is enacted at the individual level, institutions, and especially the state, have the power to do more than engage in individual harm, they can engage in actions that remove individuals’ civil and human rights. At the most extreme, the criminal legal system can, through incarceration, remove an individual's liberty and restrict many of their civil and human rights, including the right to vote, the right to work for a living wage, and of course their right to freedom. Sociologists and philosophers refer to the experience of incarceration as necropolitics or the experience of social death (Guenther, 2013; Mbembe, 2008; Patterson, 1999). At the less extreme end of institutional and state violence, individuals may experience considerable impingements on their civil rights, including, as we will demonstrate, having to make themselves available to constant, 24-hour a day, seven day a week monitoring, restrictions on driving, limitations on working, and so forth. Thus, when an abuser engages in acts of coercive violence, he is deliberately exposing her to institutional or state violence that has the potential of inflicting on her civil or social death. And, though the period of experiencing civil or social death may officially end, through being released from a state of supervision and/or surveillance, the repercussions often last a lifetime.

In the next section of the paper, we provide specific examples, drawn from interviews and our own experiences, to illustrate various forms of institutional and state violence. Monterrosa used qualitative methods and conducted 31 interviews with Black women that were criminal-legal-system impacted, which refers to a “person who is legally, economically, or familially affected in a negative way by the incarceration of a close relative. System-impact also includes people who have been arrested and/or convicted without incarceration” (Underground Scholars Language Guide, 2019). Participants were recruited through local non-profit organizations which centered advocacy for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their families, and via word-of-mouth. The methodology used is detailed in Monterrosa (2021). Hattery conducted interviews with both members of 50 couples who were living with intimate partner violence. Participants were recruited through shelters, batterer intervention programs, and the department of child and family services in two states. Half of the sample identified as Black and the other half identified as white. The methods are detailed in Hattery (2008), Hattery and Smith (2020) and Hattery (2008) and can be obtained by contacting the author. In addition to the interview data that inform the examples we choose to illustrate various forms of coercive violence, we also draw on our own personal experiences. Monterrosa is a survivor of intimate partner violence, is criminal-legal-system impacted, and volunteers in the community for a local non-profit community health organization where she provides her expertise on the dynamics and the effects of intimate partner violence as a social determinant of health. Though Hattery has not experienced intimate partner violence herself, she has family members who have, both as abusers and as victims/survivors. In addition, for years Hattery has volunteered in the community and testified as an expert witness in court cases. Both of these experiences have exposed her to people whose lives are defined by and provide illustrations of coercive violence.

Coercive violence is a specific and unique form of intimate partner violence that is distinct from coercive threats or coercive control. Given the nuance of the argument we offer here, we provide a table to guide the reader through the examples we offer below

(Table 1).

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Table 1.

Coercive Control Versus Coercive Violence in Institutions and the State

Institution	Example	Coercive control	Coercive violence
Health care	Forcing a woman to complete an unwanted pregnancy	Partner threatens to leave her if she terminates the pregnancy	Partner refuses to drive her to an abortion clinic or there is no abortion clinic near where she lives and she seeks an “underground” abortion or attempts a self-abortion
Child welfare system	Child custody	Her partner threatens to kill her if she sues for custody of their shared children	Her partner turns her into child protective services (CPS) and exposes her to an investigation and the possibility of losing custody of her children or even her parental rights
Criminalization of welfare	Welfare fraud	Her partner threatens that if she does not come home from the store with beer or cigarettes, which are not eligible purchases under Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), he will beat her up	Her partner knows that she may have misused SNAP benefits and turns her in so social services, thus subjecting her to the violence of a welfare prosecution
Criminal legal system	Forcing a woman to take the rap for her partner's drugs during a traffic stop	Partner threatens to beat her up if she does not say that the drugs are hers	Her partner reminds her that if he gets caught with drugs he will violate his parole and go back to prison or be sentenced under habitual felon laws. She takes the rap to save him from criminal legal system vis-a-vis her own incarceration
Immigration	Separation or divorce	Her partner threatens to kill her if she leaves him	Her partner turns her into immigration officers where she faces the risk of detention and deportation
The LGBTQ + community	Sex work	Person is “outed” by their partner to the police when they call 911 to report an incident of intimate partner violence	Abuser reports partner's sex work to the police, thus exposing them to the criminal legal system

The Health Care System

Extant literature (Davis, 1983; Luna, 2020; Roberts,1997) documents the ways in which low-income and poor women who are forced to rely on medicaid are subjected not only to surveillance but also to violence. For example, during most of the twentieth century, many state colleges of obstetrics and gynecology advised physicians that when pregnant women on “welfare” arrived at the emergency room to deliver their babies, especially if this was not their first child, the physician should strongly encourage women to “consent,” while in labor and prior to the birth of their child, to a tubal ligation to be performed during the delivery. Forced sterilization is a form of state-sanctioned sexual violence. And as is well documented, it was applied primarily to the bodies of poor Black and Native American women (Davis 1983; Roberts 1997).

In addition to the example we already provided regarding COVID-19 safety protocols, perpetrators can also engage in coercive violence using the health care system in other ways as well (Kaukinen, 2020). For example, in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, an abuser may engage in coercive control by threatening to beat up his partner or kill himself if she terminates a pregnancy. However, if he refuses to drive her to an abortion clinic and thereby forces her to either complete an unwanted pregnancy or seek a back-alley abortion, both of which expose her reproductive body to violence, he has engaged in coercive violence. In this example, what distinguishes coercive control from coercive violence is that rather than engaging in direct violence, he abuses his partner indirectly, through actions that expose his partner to either unsafe or unusually restrictive health care providers.

Another example of the ways in which abusers may engage in coercive violence involves refusing to allow his partner access to private health insurance. An abuser who denies his partner access to private health insurance—by refusing to cover her on his health insurance plan, or by refusing to legally marry her thus making her ineligible for coverage on his health insurance plan, or by refusing to allow her to hold a job where she could obtain her own health insurance—forces her to rely on state health plans including medicaid. The Hyde Amendment, which prohibits medicaid funds for paying for abortions, serves to deny women who are reliant on medicaid access to legal abortions. Thus, this single act of an abuser denying his partner access to private health insurance results in the same outcome as refusing to driver her to an abortion clinic, the violence is coercive: it is carried out indirectly by her partner who deliberately exposes her to the surveillance and regulation of the state system of health care.

The Child Welfare System

Roberts (1997) extends the argument laid out by Davis (1983) and others who document the history of non-consensual sterilization in the United States by illustrating its connection to the modern child welfare system. Her research uncovers a startling fact: during the 200 plus years of enslavement, Black women's bodies produced as much as 12 billion dollars of wealth in the form of more bodies to enslave. As a result, Black women's reproductive bodies required surveillance and policing. During the first half of the twentieth century, the concern shifted from encouraging the Black womb to reproduce enslaved labor, to sterilizing the Black womb so that it could not reproduce “unfit” bodies. Under the guise of eugenics, tens of thousands of Black girls and women were forcibly sterilized or sterilized without their consent. By the 1980s, when it was no longer acceptable to engage in eugenics, another strategy needed to be developed to surveil and control Black women's wombs; the child welfare system that Dorothy Roberts describes did just that. As Roberts details, 50% of all Black children have at least one touch by the child welfare system, not because Black mothers are bad mothers, but because they are disproportionately likely to be poor, and they are referred to child welfare or child protective services by teachers, health care providers, or even neighbors who are concerned about the child's welfare. Roberts argues that rather than seeing child welfare as a condition of poverty it becomes defined as a condition of Black motherhood. As a result, Black mothers are under increased surveillance, as compared to their white counterparts, regardless of their social class. Increased surveillance leads to increased “touches” by the child welfare system, and ultimately it leads to disproportionate rates of Black children being in foster care. According to the report The State of America's Children, Black children are twice as likely to be in foster care as their representation in the U.S. population (Childrens’ Defense Fund, 2020).

Abusers can take advantage of the hegemonic ideology that Black mothers are bad mothers by threatening to take their children away from them. Threats to take her child away or sue for custody if, for example, she tries to leave her abuser, is an example of coercive control. In contrast, coercive violence is committed by abusers who threaten to call child welfare services and expose the mother and her children to the child welfare system; she may lose her children, at least temporarily, to a foster care system that is not designed for her children to thrive. Once referred to the child welfare system, she will be under more intense surveillance, she may have to endure home visits by a social worker, she may have to attend parenting classes, and she may risk losing custody of her children (Douglas, 2021; Hester, 2011; Khaw et al., 2021). Exposure to the child welfare system is an example of coercive violence.

Welfare Programs

Extant literature exposes the ways in which welfare programs that include Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (commonly referred to as food stamps) surveil the low-income and poor women who utilize them (Headworth, 2020; Kohler-Hausmann, 2007; Richie, 2012). For example, one of the authors taught a student in her classes who was utilizing TANF as a strategy for escaping an abusive relationship. As a part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that “reformed” welfare, signed into law by then President Bill Clinton, TANF limited receipt to no more than two years. This student, who was less than 6 months from completing her bachelor's degree received a letter informing her that she would no longer be eligible for TANF if she continued to pursue her bachelor's degree but that she could retain her benefits by transferring to an associate degree program or licensing program like cosmetology. The “rationale” was that because a bachelor's degree typically takes four years to complete, students in bachelor's degree programs, regardless of their time to completion, were no longer eligible for TANF. This kind of surveillance is routine. And, we argue, it functions as a form of educational violence.

Another example is that of “period poverty.” Because SNAP benefits restrict beneficiaries from purchasing feminine hygiene products, many low-income and poor women find that they have no way of paying for or legally obtaining these products. “Period povery” constitutes a form of reproductive and sexual violence, and in interviews conducted with formerly incarcerated women, they reported that they were sentenced to serve time in jail on theft charges after they stole feminine hygiene products they could not afford to buy, which were not covered by their SNAP benefits (Wayland, 2019). In short, the policies that regulate poor women's access to feminine products subject them to the violence of the criminal legal system. Period poverty becomes period violence.

An abuser may also perpetrate both coercive control and coercive violence vis-a-vis the welfare system. For example, he might engage in coercive control by threatening to beat his partner if she doesn’t come home with cigarettes or toilet paper, neither of which can be purchased with SNAP benefits. In contrast, refusing to allow her to take birth control pills or throwing the pills away, which she needs in order to manage and reduce her monthly flow, or refusing to allow her to receive a donated diva cup, thus exposing her to period poverty, a form of reproductive violence, is an example of coercive violence. Specifically, she may, as women interviewed by Wayland (2019) report, be forced to steal feminine hygiene products necessary to manage her monthly cycle, thus exposing her to the criminal legal system.

Abusers also engage in coercive violence by keeping their partners dependent on welfare. They do this by utilizing a variety of coercive tactics that undermine her ability to maintain long-term work. For example, an abuser will argue with his partner all night long, preventing her from getting any sleep and forcing her to call in sick and miss work the next day. If the abuser engages in this kind of behavior even just a few days a month, it may result in the victim/survivor losing her job for absenteeism, thereby leaving her with no choice but to cycle on and off welfare intermittently. In another example, women who rely on welfare as a strategy for leaving a violent relationship may find that once they leave the abusive relationship that they, again, cycle on and off welfare as they get settled into a shelter and ultimately into a new life. In both of these examples, the cycling on and off of welfare has the potential to create an overlap in benefits, which, under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, allows the state to charge welfare recipients with fraud if their overlap in benefits is determined to be illegal or if they are not able to payback benefits they received during periods when they were employed, no matter how temporary (Douglas, 2021; Kohler-Hausmann, 2007). Repeated over and over again, this coercive control creates a “cycling” of welfare receipt and overlapping benefits. Abusers who are aware of the cycling that creates these overlapping benefits may call social services and report their partners for welfare fraud, potentially subjecting them to criminal prosecution, which is yet another form of coercive violence. An abuser may steal his partner's meager savings, which she has planned to use to pay back her benefits once she is again employed. This act of financial abuse becomes a form of coercive violence when, as a result of his stealing, she finds herself unable to pay back benefits and facing prosecution for welfare fraud.

Further surveillance tactics include administrators/investigators enlisting neighbors and others close to the victim/survivor in their investigations in order to gain information to ascertain whether she is living with her partner, and/or violating occupancy rules by having the partner spend the night at her home (Headworth, 2019, 2020). This policing mechanism can become weaponized by abusers to punish their partner and subject them to prosecution by the state, even if the partner is not currently living with the victim. This forces the woman to defend herself against the state and charges of welfare fraud. In this way, abusers who cooperate with welfare administrators and investigators engage in acts of coercive violence by exposing the victim/survivor to the criminal legal system, potential prosecution, and loss of benefits.

Finally, when abusers report their partners or ex-partners to social service or child protective services (Douglas, 2021), the perception is that the abuser has done nothing wrong; in fact, he has done the right thing by reporting a potential case of child abuse or welfare fraud. The victim/survivor not only can’t blame her partner, but she may have feelings of having been complicit in the behavior that he not only reported, but that exposed her to state surveillance. An abuser may also gaslight his partner accusing her of incurring the wrath of the child welfare system when in fact he was the one who reported her. This phenomenon can be conceptualized as the ultimate form of coercive violence: convincing a victim/survivor that she is to blame for her own predicament.

Criminal-Legal System

Of all demographic groups in the United States, Black men are by far the most over-policed by the criminal-legal system. One third of Black men will spend some time in jail or prison, and if they are poor and uneducated, the rates are even higher; 70% of Black men without a high school degree will go to jail or prison in their lifetimes (Hattery & Smith, 2018/2021). Managing their criminal legal involvement can become a full-time job for the partners of Black men. Elsewhere, Monterrosa explores the emotion work that the partners of Black men with criminal legal involvement perform in attempts to keep their relationships intact (Monterrosa, 2021). Here we focus on the ways in which criminal legal involvement can produce conditions for coercive violence.

Hyper Surveillance

In addition to incarceration, which poses challenges to intimate relationships, even more common, Black men experience surveillance and control by the criminal legal system that takes place outside of prison, including while they are parole, probation, and electronic monitoring or e-carceration. In many ways, it is these prisons outside of prisons that pose the greatest risk for coercive violence. When one is under the supervision and surveillance of the criminal legal system, one is at risk for being sent or returned back to jail or prison. The threat that one may be (re) incarcerated can be extremely stressful and can put intense pressure on intimate relationships (Monterrosa, 2021). For example, an individual on e-carceration may be subjected to random drug tests or phone calls that confirm the person is where they are supposed to be. Schenwar (2015) describes a scenario in which an individual on house arrest may be required to answer a phone call to their home landline phone on the first ring. Failure to do so will result in police officers being sent to confirm their location. This type of 24/7 surveillance is highly stressful not only for the individual on e-carceration, but for their entire family and household. Similarly, people on probation for drug charges may be required to submit to random drug tests. Knowing that an officer of the court can come to your home any time, day or night, 24/7 to collect urine or blood for a drug test can be stressful. And, if one “fails” a drug test, they will be immediately remanded back into state custody. The stakes are high, especially for someone facing a third felony drug conviction and the possibility of a long, perhaps even a life sentence, under the habitual felon or Three Strikes You’re Out laws.

In previous research conducted by Hattery (2008), the men and women we interviewed described experiences that we initially defined as coercive control, but which are, we now recognize, examples of coercive violence. One of the most common experiences that was recounted in interviews involved men who were entangled in the criminal-legal system demanding that their partners take the “rap” for drugs that were discovered through an apartment raid or traffic stop. In this example, the man does not threaten to beat his partner or leave her or commit suicide if she won’t take the rap (each of which would be an example of coercive control); rather, he reminds her that if he is arrested on another drug charge, he will go to prison, again, possibly for life. In an attempt to save her partner, the woman takes the “rap” and goes to prison herself. In this example of coercive violence the abuser does not directly inflict violence on his partner; rather, she experiences his violence indirectly, as a result of his exposing her to the criminal-legal system. Additionally, Monterrosa’s research revealed that women whose partners were involved in the criminal legal system experienced emotional and psychological abuse that was directly tied to that involvement. For example, the men they were in romantic partnerships with engaged in gaslighting the women and employed coercive tactics such as stonewalling, when the women would speak out about what they felt was harmful to them such as infidelity and taking advantage of their time, energy, and resources. Much of the energy and gendered labor the women engaged in was in an attempt to support their partners, by providing transportation to work, probation appointments and/or court, and assisting them in other ways as they navigated the bureaucratic nature of the criminal-legal-system. Dealing with bureaucracy is an arduous and time-consuming task, which takes patience and know-how. When their partners would become discouraged and shut down, the women would attempt to mitigate their partner's behavior (by, for example, walking on eggshells) so he would comply with the demands of the court. As his failure to comply could result in his being sent back to prison or jail, and thus subjecting the women to further interaction with the criminal-legal-system, victim/survivors engaged in the time-consuming emotional labor of support and mitigation. In this example, the women were “walking on eggshells” for fear of the violence of the state. This is an example of the coercive violence of the state.

Victim/survivors are often coerced into engaging in illegal activity by their abusive partners. One woman interviewed (Hattery, 2008) recounted her experience with coercive violence. Stella was driving because her partner Will's license had been suspended as a part of his sentence on a drug possession conviction. Will had a bag of crack in the car when they were pulled over by the police. Will threw the bag at Stella saying “Tell the cop the drugs are yours or you know what will happen, I’ll go back to jail. We don’t want that, do we?” When the police officers approached the car they simply informed Stella that her tail light was out, gave her warning, and she never had to submit to Will's request. A coercive threat would have been if Will had threatened to beat up Stella if she refused to say the drugs were hers. Rather than threatening her with harm, Will simply demanded that Stella take responsibility for the drugs which had the potential to expose Stella to incarceration. Thus, Will's behavior in this instance was more than an act of coercive control, it was an act of coercive violence.

Douglas’s (2021) research reveals the ways in which abusers will use the court system itself as a form of coercive violence. After separation, and in particular if the woman has filed a restraining order, court proceedings may be the only way an abuser can have any contact with his partner or ex-partner. Douglas (2021, 254) documents the many ways that abusers use the court system—by filing continuances in court, trying to split the case into different parts, and even filing in multiple courts in order to drag out proceedings because doing so both antagonized the victim and also provided an opportunity for him to see her. This type of abuse, because it engages the criminal legal system, forces the victim/survivor to be continuously subjected to the surveillance of the court. In addition, because each court appearance requires her to travel to court, possibly taking time off of work, or paying for childcare, and incurring attorney and court fees, it simultaneously functions as a form of financial abuse.

For LGBTQ + victims of IPV, using threats to “out” their partner to those that are not aware of their sexuality is a form of coercive control that abusers commonly employ. Crimes of survival, such as sex work, are often used by victims of all different sexual and gender identities. However, as a result of widespread discrimination and stigma, trans people are often locked out of engaging in work that has been normalized within our society (Nadal et al., 2014). According to the National Center for Transgender Equality (2015), “For many transgender people, the sex trade can offer greater autonomy and financial stability compared to more traditional workplaces, with few barriers to entry. However, economic insecurity and material deprivation can increase one's vulnerability to harm and decrease the ability to make self-determined choices” (p. 7). The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reports that 19% of all trans people and 47% of black trans women have engaged in sex work (2015). If a trans person is engaging in sex work and their abusive partner threatens to call the police on them and “out” them as a sex worker, this is an example of harnessing the coercive violence of the state. This is a subtle but important difference. “Outing” or threatening to out a partner's sexuality is an act of coercive control, calling the police on one's partner to report that they are engaged in illegal activity, which may lead to their arrest and their exposure to the criminal legal system, is an act of coercive violence.

Undocumented victims of IPV are often afraid to call the police when they are experiencing abuse for fear of deportation, of themselves and for their partners, and also for fears of losing their children to the child welfare system. Research shows that abusive partners will use the victim's undocumented status as a form of coercion to maintain control over their partner; he may threaten to tell the victim's employer that she is undocumented to get her to fired and comply with his dictates (Women's Law.org, 2021). However, if, instead, the abuser calls U.S. Immigration and Custom Services (ICE) himself and reports his partner or ex-partner's immigration status, knowing that she will be detained and possibly deported, this is an example of coercive violence. Her arrest and detention exposes her to the criminal legal system and her deportation exposes her to the power of the state, both of which constitute coercive violence.

Implications

The implications of our argument are significant in several key ways. First, and perhaps most important, by distinguishing between coercive control and coercive violence we have identified and articulated a new form of intimate partner violence. Second, our argument focuses attention not on the individual behavior of abusive men, but more so on the ways in which they engage in a form of violence that exposes their partners to state surveillance and state violence, including the welfare system and the criminal legal system. Coercive violence is particularly dangerous for victim/survivors of intimate partner violence because, among other things, it further removes their ability to control the situation. Even when abusive men engage in severe forms of intimate partner violence, including near lethal violence, severe emotional abuse, and rape, victim/survivors can often find some ways to control the situation. They can call the police, which may interrupt the violence, especially if the abuser is arrested. They can run away. Some victim/survivors we have talked with and cases we examined describe controlling the violence by triggering it. As the cycle of violence develops and the tensions build, a victim/survivor may choose to engage in a behavior she knows will trigger the outburst before it becomes more serious, or when she knows someone will be coming over who can help her, or because she knows her partner has an obligation and will have to leave soon after the beating. All of these strategies are examples of strategies victim/survivors use to exert agency. In cases of coercive violence, victim/survivors lose agency. Now under the surveillance and control of a state system, they are revictimized by the very state that is supposed to protect them. And, more often than not, as we have demonstrated, the state systems that are, in theory, designed to help people, especially the most marginalized and vulnerable, are instead weaponized against them. Not only are victims/survivors further victimized by the state, but the state “intervention” often re-ignites the cycle of violence victims/survivors are working so desperately to escape by leaving them with no other option than to return to their abusive partner. Facing deportation, a victim/survivor may marry her abuser in order to stay in the United States. Facing another night in jail, a victim/survivor may call her abuser in order to bail her out of jail. In short, coercive violence not only harms victims/survivors but it returns enormous power to the abuser, far more power than other forms of intimate partner violence.

Finally, by demonstrating the violence that state systems, built on systems of oppression, can be deployed against individual actors, in this case by contributing to and perpetuating intimate partner violence, our argument advances our understanding of the ways in which systems of oppression, including heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and modern capitalism are inherently violent as others have documented (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Combahee River Collective, 2015; Gillespie, 2006; Koepke, 2007). Additionally, we documented the ways in which coercive violence can and often does result in the experiences of civil and social death for the victims/survivors, the impacts of which can last a lifetime. In short, when an abuser engages in coercive violence, he holds his partner hostage in perpetuity.

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

In sum, we have argued for defining and naming a new form of intimate partner violence. Specifically, we distinguish between coercive control and coercive violence. Coercion, it has been well documented, predominates in violent relationships. We argue here that a new form of violence needs to be recognized and named: coercive violence. Rather than simply a tactic or strategy for facilitating other forms of violence, including emotional, psychological, financial, and even physical and sexual abuse, coercive violence involves an abuser deliberately exposing his partner to violence that is perpetrated by institutions or the state. Coercive violence, as compared to coercive control, relieves the abuser of having to engage in the violence himself; rather, through his actions, he deliberately exposes his partner to institutional and state systems where she experiences violence. Examples can include exposing her to the potential for contracting serious diseases, including COVID, reproductive violence, as well as state violence experienced through exposure to the criminal legal system and the welfare state. Vulnerability to coercive violence is, like all forms of intimate partner violence, intersectional, with certain populations being at significantly greater risk, including Black and Native American women (BIPOC), poor women, immigrants, and people who identify in the LGBTQ + communities. As coercive violence is perpetrated by institutions and the state, rather than individuals, coercive violence can and often does have long-term, even lifetime, implications for the victims/survivors who experience it. Whereas the bruises of physical abuse will eventually heal and the memories of the name-calling of emotional abuse may fade, the impact of criminal legal involvement or the surveillance of the welfare system may follow women for the rest of their lives, impacting their abilities to obtain employment, receive welfare benefits, or retain custody of their children. For immigrant women, the consequences may involve deportation; they are never able to return to their families and the lives they built in the United States.

Recommendations for ameliorating coercive violence demand radical, systemic change rather than reform. For example, calls to decriminalize less serious forms of intimate partner violence will not address coercive violence. Rather, the systems themselves must be dismantled to avoid the carceral creep of prior attempts to address IPV (Kim, 2019). Specifically, the carceral state and the welfare state, as they are constructed in the United States, must be dismantled and reconfigured. For example, by eliminating prosecution and incarceration for low-level drug offenses, abusers, no longer facing life sentences for drug possession, would have no incentive to force their partners to “take the rap” for a bag of crack found during a traffic stop. In fact, there would be no more traffic stops, because as we (Hattery & Smith, 2018/2021) and others (Balko, 2013) have argued, traffic violations could be handled through a combination of traffic cameras and a brigade of unarmed “meter maids.” If laws like Title IX and Title VII were passed to protect transgender people from job and housing discrimination, trans folx would be far less likely to be engaged in sex work and other aspects of the illegitimate economy, which would not only reduce their exposure to the criminal legal system, but it would remove their partner's power to engage in coercive violence by “outing” or turning them into the police for their involvement in activities like sex work. If the welfare system were dismantled and rebuilt around support and trust for people seeking assistance rather than assuming they are simply trying to cheat the system, we can imagine there would be “checks and balances” but not the need for the kind of invasive and persistent surveillance that people using the system currently experience. If the welfare system were transformed, it would, as with the other institutions, remove a tool in the abuser's toolkit. There would be no reason to unnecessarily call child protective services or in any other way subject a victim/survivor to the state surveillance of an agency.

In conclusion, as we have demonstrated here, the COVID-19 Global Pandemic revealed a new form of intimate partner violence we term “coercive violence.” We have documented a variety of ways in which abusers engage in coercive violence by exposing their partners to institutions and state systems that inflict violence, including the violence associated with exposure to the criminal legal system, the violence of reproductive (in)justice, and the removal of children through the child welfare system. We encourage other scholars of intimate partner violence to extend our framework by examining and re-examining data on coercive control with an eye for distinguishing it, as we have done here, from coercive violence. We expect that in doing so, many more examples of coercive violence will be uncovered.