family/domestic violence in Canada?

Wow! First of all I am not sure that the Justice System needs or can be strengthened. Domestic Violence is not created by the Justice System. It would be my opinion that the changes need to be made elsewhere.

I disagree with Z that antisocial behaviour is just something we have to accept is a condition of life. Perhaps some people are born this way but my life experience says that a goodly number of sociopaths are created - by adults often their parents who abuse them, who teach them by example and or neglect them. This is not to say that all abused children become sociopaths - they don't but some do. Part of the problem is that there is no one thing that causes people to be violent. First of all one has to be able to recognize it. And we all can to one degree or another, cover up the problems in our lives. Sociopaths, most of whom are very good actors, learn how to do this well. Many's the time I have sat in a courtroom listening to a sting of witnesses saying how the person on trial came from a 'perfect' family only to find out before the case is over, that it was anything but a perfect family. Damaged children and spouses just went to distant hospitals to have bones set or took sick days to get over the flu and that really meant letting the bruises go away.

So we created laws to protect and we let the pendulum swing way over the other way and now we have kids who need discipline but are given none because now social services can take the children away for giving them a slap on the butt. Somewhere in there, there has to be a happy medium but we obviously have not yet found it. Perhaps if you want to change attitudes, you could start with finding a way to eliminate all the extremes on both sides. And perhaps until that is done, we could teach anger management in schools and insist on it for abusive parents/teachers/friends/relatives.

Perhaps we could find a better way to deal with unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children than to pay the parents more welfare if they have kids. I remember talking to a girl with 4 children who came into the law office where I worked in Calgary. The kids were absolutely undisciplined by any standards, clearly unwanted - she made a point of telling me she only had them because the government paid extra welfare per child and the charities kept them in clothes and food so she had that money for herself. As my grandson would say, "Duh! What's that about?" I saw 4 kids that were primed to grow up to be abusers - they hit each other with impunity and with whatever they could get their hands on and none of them had reached puberty yet.

This should not be a major surprise - I live in a society that deals with drug abuse by providing needles and substitute drugs (also addictive drugs) to drug addicts when Ibogaine would probably work way better and is not addictive- but it always is anyway.
http://www.ibogatherapyhouse.net/cms/content/view/13/26/

Based upon 23 years of policing and investigating domestic violence and sexual assault matters I think you may have missed the boat on some of this. Yes, there is always room to improve any system that may be in place but what we have now works pretty well as far as the justice system is concerned.

You mention better community based supports. My question gets to be which ones? All Provinces have very robust victims assistance programs and every community has some sort of shelter, be it private run, government run or agency (church) run. They provide for safe heavens as well as information and support for victims and their families.

The criminal justice system has a 0 tolerance policy for domestic violence. I show up at an incident and if there is any merit to the matter then someone is going to jail or must get charged. As a police officer I don't have the digression to "let it slide just this once because it's not a big deal" or because "he didn't mean it" or because "it was just this one time and I deserved it". In fact, this has created cases where charges had to be laid and where victims feel "re-victimized" by the system but we can't have it both ways. The courts have had video testimony and victims assistance personnel available for some time now to assist victims through the process.

Just what kind of civil protections are you referring to? Release conditions, restraining orders, no contact orders and any number of judicial sanctions are already available and get used. If they are not strong enough to keep the accused away from a victim or witness then there is recourse that the police can and do take.

As far as preventing family violence is concerned, I don't think it can ever be prevented totally. There are already tones of advertising campaigns, pamphlets, programs and resources available. If education has to be concentrated in any area then it should be to teach women and their kids that they don't have to take it and to make use of the programs that are there already.

Depends on your perspective. As an American I freely admit to having a bias for the US but I know that there is much to appreciate about Canada and it's people.

Violence of any kind cannot be totally stopped no matter the best of programs, intentions or funding level. The fact is that there will always be people out there - men AND women - who firmly believe that the only way they can get what they want is through violent means.

I'm afraid your suggestions, as laudable as they are, are altogether too vague to be of much use. You wrote, "...Strengthen the Justice System , i have 3 sub points : • Creating new policies , • Improving the old policies..."

All the policies that are created and/or improved just do not always translate into anything concrete. Policies are abstractions and, as such, are subject to interpretation. They represent ideas and outcomes but not necessarily the means to attaining those outcomes. You also talk about changing attitudes. Attitudes are internally held beliefs and can only be inferred through observing behaviour. In my years as a mental health therapist, I often heard from parents and partners in domestic distress/domestic violence situations that things would be much better if only he or she 'changed their attitude'.

But, what does that look like and how would you know anyone's attitude had changed in the first place? What's really important is not so much anyone's attitude but their behaviour. When the behaviour changes, the attitude will follow suit.

Many smokers, for instance, know smoking is bad for their health yet they continue to smoke. To break that habit, they would need to stop smoking (a behaviour) and the attitude towards smoking would follow suit to reflect the new behaviour. Consider how many ex-smokers become rabid anti-smoking campaigners. The same can be seen in some domestic violence situations. Can be said, mind you, but it doesn't always turn out that way.

Consider, too, that there are some people who have ASPD (anti-social personality disorder). Otherwise known as 'psychopaths' or 'sociopaths', these people are not interested in adhering to the laws of our society. It isn't their fault they have this terrible disease, though it isn't society's fault either, but their constant lawbreaking behaviour cannot possibly ever be 'corrected' by having them change their attitude or their behaviour. Look up ASPD on Wikipedia to learn more.

I applaud your question but genuinely feel that your suggestions, though certainly well intentioned, just wouldn't work out in any systematic manner.

KB: No one ever has said that sociopaths have to be accepted as a part of life. I learned about ASPD from my psychology studies in university. I can assure you that many psychopaths are born that way. They tend to be overrepresented in the justice system because they tend to have really lengthy criminal records, including for domestic violence.

Psychopaths are impervious to learning, though they can put on a good show if it means they can get out of jail. My only point was that trying to "teach" a psychopath about the value of human life and the lives of others is pointless. That's all.

I have no doubt that psychopaths can learn their antisocial behaviours from their environments but not all domestic violence perpetrators grew up in emotionally impoverished environments. Many of them grew up in loving, caring homes and had parents who could not figure out how their son or daughter could be such a monster.

"Causes
One twin study suggests that psychopathy has a strong genetic component. The study demonstrates that children with anti-social behavior can be classified into two groups: those who were also callous acquired their behavior by genetic influences, and those who were not callous acquired it from their environment.[23]" (2)