Spanish criminal policy and the state pact on gender violence: a critical assessment

Abstract

The Spanish Comprehensive Law against Gender Violence of 2004 was a regulatory milestone, leading to action against intimate partner violence and raising awareness amongst criminal justice professionals. Sixteen years after its passage, the Spanish State Pact on Gender Violence, signed in 2017, seeks to update its content, stressing the law's punitive criminal policy orientation. This paper argues that this approach, based on criminal justice rules, may be obsolete and should be abandoned to make way for a future legal policy that emphasizes prevention and extra-criminal protection of victims. This conclusion is supported by the evolution of feminist legal theory, the paradigm shift in the international approach to fighting gender violence, the application issues the law faces and the shortcomings of its approach. Consequently, it is suggested that a system more focused on victim protection than prosecution be adopted, based on a set of civil and administrative protection mechanisms, which are lacking under current Spanish domestic law.