Book Review: Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence. By Leigh Goodmark,. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 204 pp. $29.95 (paperback and ebook), $85 (hardcover).

Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Balanced Policy Approach to Intimate Partner Violence. By Leigh Goodmark. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. 204 pp. $29.95 (paperback and ebook), $85 (hardcover).

In April 2019, the New York Times published a prominent piece recounting the experience of a 20-year-old Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant woman in New York City named Zahan, who was fleeing a forced and abusive marriage (Carranca, 2019). Reading Goodmark's book in light of this particular experience is helpful in assessing her proposal on decriminalizing domestic violence and finding a balanced policy approach.

Intimate partner violence in the United States in the form of rape, stalking, and physical assault is experienced by 36% of women and 29% of men. However, Goodmark notes that women experience mental violence as well, and more persistently than men. Sexual, racial, ethnic, and immigrant identities; socioeconomic background; and disability centrally mediate such experiences.

Goodmark's use of the Audre Lorde quote, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not lead single-issue lives,” as an epigraph is pertinent to approaching the book. Alongside limits of the current efforts to address domestic violence, the author proposes a policy directly in response to high rates of mass incarceration that define the United States. Furthermore, the multifaceted aspect of domestic violence as a criminal justice, economic, public health, community, and human rights problem, each explored in a different chapter of the book, creates sites of conversations across these axes.

Goodmark traces the history of criminalization of...