Incentivizing the Law

Before they could propel women toward the criminal justice system, brokers had to contend with the fact that most women wanted to “run a family.” Before and during the actual work of mediation, brokers thus had to convince women to reorient their preferences. Chapter 5 shows how brokers encouraged women to approach the law for assistance. To do so, brokers provided concrete services and rewards: therapy, associational membership, job training programs, medical assistance, financial support. These psychological, social, and material incentives lowered both the perceived and the actual costs of legal cases for individual women while raising the potential benefits.