Domestic violence in Novi Pazar: The need for modern approach in a traditional society

Domestic violence is a specific, complex and very widespread form of crime that has been marginalized and ignored by our society for years, and which leaves severe, lasting and farreaching consequences. The traditional concept of understanding this phenomenon, in the absence of adequate accompanying mechanisms of protection, has led to inadequate treatment of the police and the judicial authorities, but of other institutions as well. The topic of our paper will be analysis of the criminal justice aspect of domestic violence and the presentation and analysis of statistical data of legal practice in processing of cases of domestic violence on the territory of Novi Pazar municipality. The fact that Novi Pazar does not have extensive research to determine the criminological and sociological framework of domestic violence in this municipality, that the scientific and the professional public, but the media as well, did not deal with this problem sufficiently, points out to one of the main characteristics of the traditional understanding of this form of crime - ignoring the public and treating this form of crime as a family problem that needs to be resolved within the family without involvement of the competent authorities. However, we did not want to point out that members of the patriarchal family are at greater risk of being victims of domestic violence, but what can be concluded is that in patriarchal settings domestic violence is still difficult to recognize as an important social problem, but rather a private a problem that should remain within the intimate sphere of the family. By analyzing the obtained data, we can conclude that there is a tendency for increase of this crime, but also the tendency of a mild penal policy, which points to the urgent need for its multivariate research and animation of the social and the scientific public in this area in order to prevent it, reduce the dark number and protect the victims. It is necessary to intensify the work on the prevention of domestic violence, to strengthen the penal policy towards the perpetrators of this criminal act, but above all freeing from prejudices rooted in the patriarchal settings that domestic violence represents a family problem that needs to be solved within the family itself.