It is with great interest that the Professional Order of Criminologists of Quebec (OPCQ) welcomed the recent announcement concerning Bill 24 aimed at the use of the anti-reconciliation bracelet to better protect victims of domestic violence.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
In the opinion of the OPCQ, the deployment of anti-reconciliation bracelets is a key measure aimed at protecting victims and providing them with an increased feeling of security. As a professional order whose mission is to protect the public, we can only welcome it and salute this first in the country, which sends a clear signal as to the government’s intentions in the face of domestic violence.
Furthermore, we remain concerned about the idea of creating a false sense of security among victims, if this initiative is not part of a perspective aimed in particular at the rehabilitation of perpetrators of domestic violence. Moreover, we believe that, in many situations, this is a measure that cannot have the expected relevance.
Indeed, we must consider domestic violence as a whole that includes a victim and a perpetrator. Thus, it is essential to work at the genesis of the problem, that is to say with the person who uses violence. The bracelet represents in itself a modality exerting a form of control which does not allow the author to work on his problem.
Without commitment to a therapeutic approach, the bracelet simply risks postponing violent behavior and dangerousness for the victim.
In this sad chapter, think of the two feminicides that have occurred in recent days, adding to nearly twenty others last year. Coroner Gamache raised in May 2020 the importance of the services put in place to ensure that the offender gives up his violent behavior1. In its report “Rebuilding Trust”2published the same year, the committee of experts also agreed with these concerns.
The OPCQ recognizes that the government action group placed under the responsibility of the Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, has announced several measures and investments since 2020. We fear, however, that these measures cannot take full effect without an accountable body coordinating their updating.
Together, let’s seize the opportunity that the deployment of anti-reconciliation bracelets offers us collectively to be part of an integrated service approach. We can no longer save it.
Thus, we hope that the advent of this innovative modality will also be an opportunity to put forward more unifying measures and actions which, beyond foreseeing which actors, other than the courts, could impose the port will be able to grasp the issue of domestic violence in its entirety. We owe this to ourselves as a society.
Like what was raised during the short consultations in the parliamentary committee; to really change things, it is first of all a change of mentality that we need. As a professional order, we feel concerned in the first place and we wish to contribute the unique expertise and experience of our professionals who deploy at the intersection of justice, psychology and criminal sociology to contribute to this change.