Obligations to Protect Mental Integrity: Improving State Compliance by Criminalising Coercive Control?

Abstract Positive obligations arising from human rights instruments require states to provide criminal law protection to individuals’ mental integrity against psychological violence. These obligations suggest a close connection between psychological violence and coercive control. However, both the concept of mental integrity and its relationship to coercive control remain unclear. This article examines the legal interests protected by offences of coercive control. It argues that such offences are principally concerned with violations of liberty and (mental) autonomy rather than mental integrity. Coercive control offences are therefore likely to protect mental integrity only indirectly. This is not uncommon in criminal law, where offences often do not directly protect the legal interest of mental integrity. An important exception may be the offence of assault, insofar as it encompasses mental assault. If so, this offence seems better suited than coercive control offences to provide the protection of mental integrity required by human rights law. Building on this analysis, the article evaluates different approaches to defining coercive control and mental assault offences and demonstrates how choices concerning offence elements and evidentiary thresholds shape both their scope and their capacity to address psychological violence.