"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

SIx Obstacles to Equal Justice

The six principle obstacles to protection and justice for women in the criminal justice system are:

1. A near absolute police and prosecutorial discretion to pick and choose which crimes the system will treat seriously and which they will ignore, and to do so with impunity. The exercise of this enormous discretionary power is virtually outside the rule of law.

2. An intractable, deep-rooted sexism and racism that remains institutionalized throughout the criminal justice system. This sexism and racism, combined with the system's absolute discretion to ignore crimes whenever they wish, means that violence against women cases are the cases most often ignored, dumped, or given short shrift.

3. Society's failure to answer the question of who polices the police, and the failure to even ask the question in regard to district attorneys, means the criminal justice system is not only legally unaccountable when dumping cases of violence against women. In addition, there is also virtually no other viable social mechanism by which the public can make the system implement its powers on behalf of victims of violence against women.

4. The repression of effective victim advocacy due to increasing criminal justice system controls over the funding and functioning of rape and domestic violence centers.

5. The invisibility of denial of protection and justice to victims of violence against women to the public, often to the victims themselves, and even to the officer's supervisors who review the officers reports.

6. The failure to target the district attorneys. Advocacy groups, social justice groups, and civil rights groups that aim to correct abuses in the criminal justice system usually do so by focusing on the police, while completely ignoring the District Attorney. This is monumental and puzzling mistake, since the District Attorney is the most powerful law enforcement official in your community.