The decline of younger solicitors entering criminal legal aid threatens the sustainability of the criminal defence profession in England and Wales. This study applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour to examine whether commonly cited recruitment barriers influence aspiring solicitors’ decisions not to specialise in this sector after graduation. Survey data from 525 law students under the age of 35 were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling. The findings indicate that attitudes and perceived behavioural control significantly predict intentions not to specialise. Negative beliefs relating to remuneration, workload, and student debt were found to shape unfavourable attitudes, while limited familiarity with the profession and restricted access to training opportunities contributed to reduced perceptions of control. Practically, the findings highlight key areas that CLA firms and policymakers may need to address to improve recruitment. The study also extends the Theory of Planned Behaviour into a new professional context, demonstrating the value of indirect measures in explaining career decision-making.
Positive obligations arising from human rights instruments require states to provide criminal law protection to individuals’ mental integrity against psychological violence. These obligations suggest a close connection between psychological violence and coercive control. However, both the concept of mental integrity and its relationship to coercive control remain unclear. This article examines the legal interests protected by offences of coercive control. It argues that such offences are principally concerned with violations of liberty and (mental) autonomy rather than mental integrity. Coercive control offences are therefore likely to protect mental integrity only indirectly. This is not uncommon in criminal law, where offences often do not directly protect the legal interest of mental integrity. An important exception may be the offence of assault, insofar as it encompasses mental assault. If so, this offence seems better suited than coercive control offences to provide the protection of mental integrity required by human rights law. Building on this analysis, the article evaluates different approaches to defining coercive control and mental assault offences and demonstrates how choices concerning offence elements and evidentiary thresholds shape both their scope and their capacity to address psychological violence.
Traditionally, mainstream criminal law discourse has associated domestic violence most closely with physical violence. Feminist jurisprudential approaches, however, have long emphasised coercion and non-physical abuse in domestic violence. The term “coercive control”, developed by Evan Stark in his clinical practice, has led to a growing public and political sentiment that coercive controlling behaviour was an under-recognised precursor to intimate partner violence with associated gaps in the criminal, civil and family law statutes. A stand-alone criminal offence of coercive control was introduced in Queensland, Australia, in 2023. The paper analyses the new offence provisions against a formal rule of law framework, arguing that the offence as drafted offends well-established rule of law principles. It will lead to ambiguity, uncertainty and unpredictability around what does and does not constitute coercive control within a particular relationship and abrogates key evidentiary safeguards that protect an accused’s right to a fair trial. These issues raise important and unanswered questions around how to ensure that the law captures serious instances of coercive control without criminalising behaviour that is fundamentally not criminal.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) faces the critical challenge of balancing its mandate to adjudicate individual criminal responsibility by integrating victims’ narratives into its proceedings. While the ICC readily incorporates victims’ firsthand evidence addressing disputed facts, it struggles to accommodate broader historical and emotional narratives. These accounts often clash with the adjudicative framework of international trials, which reduces them to factual details. This process, termed ‘skeletonization’, excludes essential socio-historical dimensions and diminishes the Court’s truth-seeking objectives. This article identifies a dyadic tension between legal truth and expansive victim narratives, arguing that critiques of narrow legal scrutiny and calls for inclusivity are both legitimate and necessary. Drawing on Robinson’s concept of a ‘zone of permission,’ it identifies two critical zones allowing procedural flexibility. The first, truth and justice, highlights trials’ role in fostering a collective understanding of atrocities beyond determining guilt or innocence. The second, victims’ right to truth, underscores the legal imperative to allow victims to share their experiences beyond binary adjudicative frameworks. The article evaluates adversarial and non-adversarial evidence presentation models to operationalise these zones of permissions, proposing a hybrid model: judge-led direct examinations followed by cross-examinations. This model ensures comprehensive victim narratives while safeguarding procedural fairness. It demonstrates how the ICC’s statutory and procedural framework can accommodate the historical and emotional dimensions of victims’ testimonies. By adopting a narrative-sensitive approach, the ICC can reinforce its commitment to truth, justice, and accountability while fostering a more inclusive understanding of mass atrocities.
