Domestic violence policies in the Netherlands: A regime of deficiency

In a number of countries, domestic violence is represented as a governable phenomenon that is amenable to policy interventions. Over the past 40 years in the Netherlands, however, this approach has not resulted in a reduction of domestic violence. Yet new policy strategies continue to be designed to improve existing interventions. In this article, we focus on a Dutch policy measure that aims to detect early signals of violence and abuse. We argue that this strategy, by approaching domestic violence as a technical problem, fails to take into account structural and symbolic violence. As a conseq... Mehr ...