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HSPH Researcher Looks at Why Battered Women Kill
Angela Browne never intended to go to prison. Neither did she envision that a summer job in Colorado would lead to a senior research scientist position in the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. But her career path has brought her to both of these places. She now alternates her time between the school and New York's maximum security prison for women, where she interviews inmates for her research.
In 1979, while working toward her PhD in social psychology, Browne took a summer job interviewing women as part of a battered women syndrome study. This Colorado-based study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, was the first research study in the US to focus on women who were in, or had been in, relationships with physically aggressive men.
Angela Browne, senior research scientist with the Harvard Injury Control Research
Center, studies patterns of violence in the lives of imprisoned women.
Browne became part of a project team that pioneered the application of self-defense pleas for women who killed their abusive mates. The self-defense plea first appeared in British Common Law and has been used successfully by men for centuries. However, it has been difficult to convince judges that it is a legitimate plea for women in violent intimate partner relationships. "Even with evidence of severe assault," she says, "only 25% of women who attempted the self-defense plea were acquitted." The others did time, often receiving long sentences. Browne began visiting her research subjects inside the prison, as they served their prison sentences.
"From these women, I heard of other women in prison who had histories of being victims of violence by partners, or in childhood, or both. Many were sentenced for crimes committed by their partners," says Browne. "They would be forced to buy drugs, or to act as a lookout during a crime."
The stories piqued Browne's curiosity. She knew that, statistically, homicide is largely a male crime--it is unusual for women to kill. Wondering what compelled some women and not others to commit homicide, she began a comparison study researching the differences, if any, between the women who killed abusive mates and those who did not. Her research showed that women are more likely to kill during an incident in which they believe that they or a child will be seriously hurt or killed.
Since 1988, much of Browne's time has been spent in prisons. She spends about eight days a month at Bedford Hills, New York State's maximum security facility for women. Bedford houses 850 women, one-third of whom carry life sentences. Browne is particularly interested in how past violence in these women's lives, whether it be childhood violence, sexual abuse, or violence by male intimates, may have paved their paths to prison.
She recently received a Senior Soros Justice Fellowship, which enables her to gather the qualitative data that goes with the quantitative aspects of her research, and she plans to write a book that focuses on violence in the life histories of women in prison.
Author of the 1987 book, When Battered Women Kill, Browne is frequently called to serve as an expert witness on the issues affecting women who would otherwise have no voice in the criminal justice system.
- Contributed by Sharon O'Brien, program administrator in the Department of Health Policy and Management
