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Abstract: This article examines the defence of coercion in Scots criminal law and its capacity to recognise offending arising from domestic abuse. There will then be a comparison with how coercion has been conceptualised in criminal offences and it will be evidenced that there are emerging tensions between the approach to coercion taken in the context of criminal defences and the broader concept of coercion as it has been developed elsewhere in the criminal law. It will be argued that the tensions emerging in these spheres are symptomatic of broader legal inertia affecting criminal defences in Scots law and speak to a broader inability of criminal defences to accommodate the experiences of those who offend as a result of domestic abuse. It will be concluded that more should be done to align current understandings of coercion as a concept and that such alignment may negate the need for bespoke defences designed to accommodate the experiences of victims of abuse.
Keywords: coercion; coercive control; domestic abuse; criminal defences; Scots criminal law; compulsion; necessity; law reform
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