“Human Rights Protection, Democratic Deliberation”
77
may be overused, but what the best laws and the exemplary
practices provide, after all, is protection of a certain kind. Naturally,
this sort of protection aims at making timely and early interventions
so as to prevent the phenomenon of VAW. Putting things this way,
and the work toward which this concept of protection is directed, it
has in all but name transformed into the concept of
prevention
.
Thus, drawing on the empirical evidence cited, I propose this
preliminary account as alternative approach toward prevention of
VAW. In piecemeal, it runs as follows:
(1)
A function of the law is to protect personal autonomy. Consistent
with this function, everyone may have an interest in protection that
intervenes before the occurrence of VAW, which undermines
personal autonomy. Protection that preempts the phenomenon of
VAW, namely, protection that prevents VAW, has a legal basis. In
this regard, if laws criminalizing hostile gestures and abusive
speeches typically considered to be symptomatic of psychological
violence, the precursors to physical violence, are not already
enshrined in the state’s legal code, then efforts in this direction
ought to be advanced.
(2)
Another way in which the occurrence of VAW might be prevented
is under prescribed conditions the government should provide
people with the relevant information about their partner’s history
of violence, so that they can leave a relationship before the
phenomenon of VAW occurs. The right-to-ask and the right-to-
know information about a person’s past history of violence ought
to be recognized, implemented
,
and enforced by all police
departments.
(3) While the concept of prevention advanced here assigns special
tasks to the police, it does not imply that all the work of deterring
occurrence of VAW has to be, will be, or is indeed capable of being
performed by the police. Due to finite resources and circumscribed
remit, the special units have to ally with the relevant service
providers, for example, non-profit, quasi-non-governmental
