Criminalisation of Coercive Control - Research Brief

Coercive control is a key feature of intimate partner violence. Framed by Evan Stark (2007) as a 'liberty crime', his conceptualisation of coercive control sought to capture the long-term, ongoing nature of a wide range of forms of violence which are not exclusively physically but can pervade an individual's daily life with devastating impact. It is not a new concept. Coercive control has been articulated in the work of Dobash & Dobash (1979), Schechter (1982), Ptacek (1999) amongst others. Indeed, Hamberger, Larsen & Lehrner, (2017) identify 22 different definitions of coercive control all of which carry with them different implications for research and practice. Importantly as Wangmann (2020: 222) states: 'What is fundamental to all of this theoretical work is that this understanding of control came from the accounts provided by women themselves'.