ABSTRACT

Forced marriage occurs when an individual is pressured psychologically or physically into marriage. Methods to detect forced marriage are challenging for most police organisations, who are prevented from intervening due to honour-systems and cultural values; as well as ensuing physical and psychological barriers, which prevent victim reporting. Applying key components of Sellin’s (1933 Sellin, T., 1933. Culture conflict and crime. New York: Social Science Research Council. [Google Scholar]) Culture Conflict theory, 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with police officers and forced marriage specialists to determine whether police are able to recognise and respond to forced marriage situations, and whether lack of awareness, understanding and training on forced marriage influences officers’ perceptions of policing of forced marriage. The findings from this study suggest that police officers are not cognisant of forced marriage and are not trained adequately in it so that awareness of forced marriage and the cultural conflict it creates forms part of their habitual investigative processes.

摘要

强迫婚姻是指个人在心理或身体上受到压力而结婚。对于大多数警察组织来说，发现强迫婚姻的方法具有挑战性，由于荣誉制度和文化价值观，他们无法进行干预；以及随之而来的身体和心理障碍，从而阻止受害者报告。应用 Sellin's ( 1933) 的关键组件 塞林，T.，1933 年。文化冲突和犯罪。纽约：社会科学研究委员会。 [Google Scholar] ) 文化冲突理论，对警察和逼婚专家进行了 21 次半结构化访谈，以确定警察是否能够识别和应对逼婚情况，以及是否缺乏对逼婚的认识、理解和培训影响警察对强迫婚姻治安的看法。这项研究的结果表明，警察不了解强迫婚姻，也没有接受过足够的培训，因此对强迫婚姻及其造成的文化冲突的认识成为他们习惯性调查过程的一部分。