Friday, Feb. 11th, the International Law Society and Women’s Law Society hosted a Zoom discussion with Dr. Kelebogile Zvobgo. Zvobgo is an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary as well as the director of the International Justice Lab (IJL), founded by Zvobgo in 2019. The discussion featured a presentation titled “Gender Violence and Public Attitudes Toward Punishment,” highlighting her research regarding gender-based violence and punishment.
Marshall-Wythe School of Law student Matt Martin ’23 introduced Zvobgo as well as her work with the IJL, which produces research on human rights, transitional justice and international law and courts. Holding a degree in political science and international relations from University of Southern California, Zvobgo said that she never expected to be in this position.
“I kind of had this fork in the road my senior year of college, where I was either going to get a PhD in French literature or go to law school, and clearly neither of those happened. So, it’s funny to be, now, presenting at a law school, the place where I have a job in political science,” Zvobgo said.
She began her presentation by introducing her current research collaboration with Dr. Suparna Chaudhry, an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark College and affiliated scholar with the IJL.
Zvobgo and Chaudhry began thinking about their current project while Zvobgo was a pre-doctoral fellow at the College and while Chaudhry was in her last year at Christopher Newport University. Their objective is “to understand what the public thinks about the appropriate remedy for gender violence.” Their research is made possible by an American Political Science Association Centennial Center Research Grant and support from an National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
“We know that a range of international nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International have been advocating vociferously in different parts of the world to absolutely have criminal accountability for sexual and gender-based violence, but for it to not reach the extent of capital punishment,” Zvobgo said.
Zvobgo mentioned briefly that though there has been a lot of research done concerning government policy and how effective they are, there has not been much work considering citizens’ views on anti-gender violence measures.
Zvobgo said that this lack of research is a “striking omission,” as these public opinions can be used to influence public policy development. Many citizens, Zvobgo said, even believe that court issued sentences for violent crimes are too lenient, and that people typically view sex offenses as especially heinous crimes.
“They may be persuaded to support alternative sentences like imprisonment and victim compensation, so this is where we come in,” Zvobgo said. “We want to know: can human rights organizations, especially how they frame arguments against the death penalty, change individuals preferences on punishment?”
“They may be persuaded to support alternative sentences like imprisonment and victim compensation, so this is where we come in,” Zvobgo said. “We want to know: can human rights organizations, especially how they frame arguments against the death penalty, change individuals preferences on punishment?”
Zvobgo then discussed how her research was being conducted as well as their preliminary findings, stating that they have currently collected two-thirds of their research responses.
The IJL’s current hypothesis is that exposure to effectiveness frames will results in increased support for alternatives to the death penalty, and that citizens are sensitive to the stated effectiveness of government policy. Along with this, they also believe that exposure to human rights findings will result in increased support for these alternatives.
“Citizens are sensitive to external criticisms of their country’s human rights records, so if it is a human rights organization that is saying this policy or this practice is incompatible with human rights, that, again, will persuade people away from the death penalty,” Zvobgo said.
The IJL’s current research is focused on the crime of rape in India and is formatted as an online study. The study uses a sample of about a thousand Indian adults, randomly assigning each person to one of three treatment conditions (effectiveness, human rights, and control) with an additional manipulation for familiar versus unfamiliar in terms of the victim. Her study specifically uses Amnesty International as their human rights advocacy group example, as they have been proven to be influential on governments changing their policies.
Zvobgo mentioned that the research specifically focuses on India because it is the largest and most populous developing democracy in the global South, and that the crime of rape receives a lot of media attention due to the frequency of assaults. Along with this, they had to study a country in which capital punishment is legal.
“We are interested in the public support for long-term imprisonment as an alternative to the death penalty. We are also interested in the public support for monetary compensation to victims for emotional distress as well as for physical injuries,” Zvobgo said. “We have a last outcome which is for police to provide women’s protection to the victim.”
In terms of preliminary results, Zvobgo said that, as of now, it seems that people are immoveable on their death penalty stance.
“Deriving expectations from prior scholarship led us to perhaps an overly optimistic review of people’s ability to move,” Zvobgo said. “Despite knowing that there are these people that have spent time on death row incorrectly or who have been executed wrongly, 60% of the public still supports capital punishment, and that brings up a whole range of concerns about the state of criminal justice, domestically and internationally.”
Zvobgo said that they are currently thinking about issuing a second survey that substitutes sexual violence for another serious crime, such as murder, to determine whether human rights impacts and reactions may vary with different issues. Her team is also considering going to other countries to see if they can replicate the results.
Her discussion concluded with a brief question and answer segment from audience members. Grace Myers, a third year law student at the College, asked how we can reconcile the need to take gender-based violence seriously, and the increasing desire to have less death penalty cases.
“Showing people that you can still have accountability that does not reach executions, whether that’s long term imprisonment or whether that’s an expectation of compensation to accompany that, there are many options for accountability that do not result in execution, and so we don’t have to answer one crime with a human rights violation,” Zvobgo said.
Zvobgo mentioned that regularizing vengeance through retributive justice is incredibly important, but that it does not have to compete with the desire for accountability. We can’t solve one problem with another problem.
“If we really care about survivors, then we should be increasing things and supporting things like reporting mechanisms, being able to provide psychosocial support, being able to provide counseling, being able to provide medical support, and actually having more cases go through the process,” Zvobgo said.
“If we really care about survivors, then we should be increasing things and supporting things like reporting mechanisms, being able to provide psychosocial support, being able to provide counseling, being able to provide medical support, and actually having more cases go through the process,” Zvobgo said.
She mentioned that in the restorative justice framework, this is what reparations can assist in ending cycles of recurring violence by allowing the victims, communities, or countries to feel whole again. By doing this, instead of issuing individual sentences and moving on, communities can try to actively end the repetition of crimes.
“I think reducing harmful policies while expanding opportunities or expectations for accountability is what’s really needed,” Zvobgo said.
If you are interested in Professor Zvobgo’s research or relevant speakers, she recommends subscribing to the digest at the Global Research Institute which advertises most of the events regarding human rights and transitional justice from the International Justice Lab.
