The Importance of Civil Pathways to Protection Orders

Abstract

Civil protection orders (CPOs) were created in part to offer legal protections from domestic violence for those who do not want police or other criminal justice interventions. For CPOs to fulfill this function, people must be able to access CPOs outside of criminal processes. The study presented by this Article shows that in some rural communities, they cannot. 

From an original dataset of over 3,400 CPO case files—nearly all those filed across an entire state during one full calendar year—this Article uncovers a surprising truth: in some rural places, only people who engage with law enforcement file cases seeking CPOs. People who do not interact with law enforcement (or perhaps do not receive a helpful response) do not file these cases. This finding suggests that people need a pathway to the remedy. That is, they need help from institutions to learn about and pursue CPOs. Where no helping institutions outside of the police exist, there are no civil pathways to CPOs. In these places, CPOs become a component of the criminal system’s response to domestic violence rather than an alternative to it. This criminalization of the remedy limits its reach and value.

Scholars and advocates increasingly have decried the dominant criminalized response to domestic violence and the underinvestment in all other sources of intervention and support. This Article demonstrates that even civil legal interventions are engulfed by the criminal justice system when policies fund the police at the expense of everything else. And it calls for investments in rural civil institutions and information campaigns to increase the accessibility and preserve the value of CPOs.

Keywords: civil protection order, restraining order, access to justice, domestic violence, courts, law enforcement, rural