Is the new act on prevention of domestic violence manifestation of so called security law?

Abstract

The paper is devoted to a critical examination of the effects and scope of the new Act on Prevention of Domestic Violence. Placing it in the framework he refers to as the specialisation of criminal law in Serbia, the author undertakes to present criminal policy arguments against the underlying premise of the Act. By arguing the lack of justification for its introduction into the legal system, on the ground that it was not preceded by any extensive research into the state of this socio-pathological phenomenon, the author simultaneously identifies, by way of a brief genealogical analysis, the extreme dogma of the women's rights movement as both a source of value on which the Act rests, and a source of all of its adverse effects on the legal system in general. The value source from which the Act's solutions derive is one-sided, plain and prejudiced view of the relations between genders rather than care for the state of affairs in a family in the Serbian society. In fact, what this Act concerns itself with is overstating the human rights of women in relationships with men, where women are the alleged victims of gender-based violence, rather than preventing the adverse effects of aggressive tendencies on harmonious and balanced family relationships. The means by which it does so is extremely questionable and doubtful, as it introduces the categories of possible perpetrator of violence, who is in fact the future criminal offender, domestic violence risk assessment, which is a kind of prediction that someone will commit a criminal offence, responsibility that shifts back, which means before the criminal prosecution takes place or before anyone is even suspected, which thus represents some kind of criminal procedure for the offence yet to be committed in the future or, better yet, a future criminal procedure. On the whole, in drafting this Act, the lawmaker sailed into what would law consider uncharted waters - those that very few, even from the science fiction, ever ventured in, and even they with difficulty. Evidently, this venture is another embodiment in science of a legislative phenomenon described as the so-called security law. But, it would still, at least in Serbia, be its worst face. The one conceived to undermine the most important institution of any society - the family.