Until now, the concrete and data-based consequences of the gradual establishment of specialized courts for gender-based violence have never been evaluated. These, launched in 2005, only see these types of crimes, but they do not exist everywhere and whether a victim ends up in one of them or a regular one will depend on their postcode. This is why a group of economists studied what it means to open a specialized institution in an area where there is none and the result is that women report more: in fact, complaints increase on average by 28%. .
This is the main conclusion drawn from work recently published in J.public economics review by Jorge García-Hombrados, Marta Martínez-Matute and Carmen Villa, who have been working on the project for five years. To do this, they used data from complaints filed in the 431 judicial districts from 2005 to 2018, in addition to judicial resolutions, complaints for other types of crimes or protection orders issued. From there, they applied various econometric techniques to compare judicial parties in which specialized courts were opened with those that never had them and achieve a “robust result” in all methods, they say.
To prevent the effect from being inferred from other variables, they compared “twin” judicial parties, meaning they share similar unemployment rates, population, or number of prior complaints. “They are similar parties but differentiated because some have specialized courts and others do not,” explains Martínez-Matute, professor at the Department of Economic Analysis at the Autonomous University of Madrid and one of the authors of the study .
Furthermore, given that the establishment of the courts, also called exclusive courts – because they only hear cases of gender violence – was staggered and began to open in 2005 after the approval of the comprehensive law against gender violence of 2004, they also compare between before and then in each judicial district. “What we are doing is causal identification. It is not simply a matter of taking two series (complaints filed in both courts) and establishing a correlation. Here, we can talk about causality,” adds the expert.
The results also reveal that the creation of this type of court has an impact on the number of women who ultimately decide to file a complaint against their attacker, but “particularly” in offenses linked to minor physical injuries or included in psychological violence such as as constraint, threats. or crimes against the integrity and privacy of the victim. The study highlights that this type of violence is generally “the least reported”, which “suggests” that having courts in which “the process is facilitated” can be “effective in encouraging reporting”.
Shorter processes
The survey, for which economists also interviewed nearly 40 judges and interviewed victim support associations, details the differences that exist between certain jurisdictions and others. Violence against women courts, to which according to the latest data 36% of women do not have access, are exclusive, that is, they only hear these cases, they tend to be less overloaded and have more human and material resources. In addition, magistrates are more trained. And also legal staff, civil servants, social services and forensic doctors.
However, in so-called mixed courts, all types of cases are heard, from drug trafficking to real estate fraud, and they generally do not have suitable rooms or separate circuits between victim and aggressor, for example. The research also analyzes the impact of the creation of these courts on the resolution time of the judicial process and concludes that this is considerably reduced: thus, in these cases, the time between the filing of a complaint and the conviction, acquittal or dismissal of charges. It reduces between 40 and 69 days compared to non-specialized courts.
In this sense, the authors take into account the fact that “the arduous and slow judicial process” is generally one of the obstacles identified by women for not denouncing and, for all this, they hypothesize that the opening of ‘a specialized judicial body “can improve the experience” and thus “increase reporting” if victims “have information” on this subject. However, the fact that files are entrusted to a specialized center is not in many cases a guarantee of fewer obstacles for victims. In fact, of the 17 judicial authorities which reject the greatest number of protection orders, 12 are of this type.
On the other hand, the authors did not find that the establishment of a judicial body of this type had an impact on the reduction of murders due to gender-based violence, but they emphasize that the results “must be interpreted with caution” because statistically femicides are “a low probability result” (654 cases between 2005 and 2018, according to data from the Government Delegation against Gender Violence).
And other reasons?
One of the “concerns” the researchers faced was whether the increase in complaints could be due to other factors, for example the actual increase in gender-based violence in a certain location, the rise in unemployment, which, according to the available scientific literature, can lead to an aggravation of abuses or to the success of public campaigns aimed at encouraging reporting.
For this reason, they also studied these elements by adding them as variables to the analysis: “During these five years, we have proposed tests that allow us to control these factors that could influence. For example, we integrate the unemployment rate and isolate the result from the potential effect and the results remain robust,” explains Martínez-Matute. To analyze, for example, if what may have increased is violence and if that is why complaints are also increasing, the researchers used data from six cycles of the Macro-survey against gender violence (from 1999 to 2019).
“Taken together, the results reveal that the functioning of the justice system and its resources play an important role in victims’ decisions to report and suggest that specialized courts constitute an effective strategy,” conclude the economists, motivated by the interest of “ fill a gap.” which existed until now in scientific research.
