Provided for in the law on violence against women of 2004, governed by a decree of 2005, the courts specializing in gender violence had given rise to a deep debate in Spain at the time. The General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), equivalent to the Superior Council of the Judiciary, feared in particular that they would be contrary to the Constitution, and represent a kind of special jurisdiction for women. Fifteen years later, not only has the CGPJ swept aside its doubts, but it has proposed to specialize 33 existing criminal jurisdictions in gender violence and to create seven new ones, in order to “To help improve the response of institutions to male chauvinist violence”.
During this time, nearly 2 million complaints were handled in these specialized courts, at a rate of nearly 150,000 annually. Almost 700,000 sentences have been passed, and 72% of these resulted in the conviction of one man. “We realized that, in these courts, the resolution of cases was accelerating, and that the number of complaints for threats or psychological violence increased by 17%”, emphasizes Marta Martinez Matute, professor of economic theory at the Autonomous University of Madrid and co-author of the survey “Domestic violence and judicial functioning: an analysis of the effects of the creation of courts of violence against women”.
Better protected victims
After studying the differences between the regions where these specialized courts exist and those which do not, the authors also concluded that “The number of complaints for serious physical violence remained unchanged, no doubt because these cases are less hidden. And the percentage of absolutions and convictions did not vary ”, add Mme Matute. There would therefore be neither a trivialization of this type of case by the judges assigned to these jurisdictions nor a hardening of penalties, but an emergence of “light” crimes, which could confirm their preventive role.
“The main problem is that between 20 and 30% of cases of gender violence do not come to court, underlines Mme Matute. By speaking with police officers and judges, they confirmed to us that victims feel more protected when there are specialized courts. ”
In addition, nearly 1,400 of the 5,300 Spanish judges have followed a small training in gender perspective in recent years and at least as many have registered for a more complete training, including a competition, a theoretical test and another practical. For the director of the Observatory against domestic and gender violence, Maria Angeles Carmona, “This is a very important step. What we want to instill in the judges is how to enhance the victim’s statement, taking into account that, often, it is the only prosecution evidence that exists against the aggressor ”.