Sparing the abusers.

Insult to Injury: Rethinking Our Response to Intimate Abuse, by Linda G. Mills (Princeton, 192 pp., $19.95)

TRUE story, from Insult to Injury: A man beats and rapes his wife; later, he holds a loaded gun to her head in front of her small children. His guilt is indisputable. Total punishment: six months of incarceration, followed by a term of probation. Now, complete the following statement. "The six months of incarceration was a travesty because ..." (a) "the sentence was absurdly short; serious crimes require serious punishment" or (b) "the sentence was absurdly long; the victim wanted counseling for the offender, not punishment, so incarceration was unduly harsh."

Did you choose (a)? Linda Mills, a professor of social work at New York University, says (b). Her book, Insult to Injury, rejects the mandatory-arrest-and-prosecution policies for domestic violence that now apply in nearly every jurisdiction in the United States. Under the regime that Mills proposes, men who torment their spouses and domestic partners can elude real punishment almost indefinitely, as victims will have the power to help them avoid arrest and prosecution.

Under the status quo, Mills complains, it is prosecutors, not victims, who make the decisions in the criminal-justice system. Policies that are tilted toward prosecution fail to acknowledge that women themselves perpetuate domestic violence by abusing children; and, of course, the system is biased against the poor, the black, and the disenfranchised. This is vintage left-wing criminology, with the flavor notes unique to the memorable 1967 harvest: Crime is never a choice, society is to blame, and punishment is merely avoiding the problem.

In lieu of punishment, Mills advocates Intimate Abuse Circles. May I propose that no aspect of crime has ever been or will ever be solved by the use of anything involving the words "Intimate" and "Circles?" Forget jail; now you can be "punished" with the punishment no criminal dreads: hours of harmless blather. Mills wants experts to meet with abusers, abusees, and their family and friends to discuss abuse problems. And whereas mandatory prosecution is "playing God," "human transformation should be the heart and soul of the Intimate Abuse Circle." Human transformation shall be achieved through the healing benediction of words, words, words.

Will ill-socialized men feel anything but contempt toward covens of experts yammering about "communication"? Such efforts will indeed earn the contempt of the more inarticulate abusers, most of whom are no strangers to the lectures of well-meaning professionals with degrees in social work. And the crafty, manipulative abusers will learn from these Intimate Circles a new lexicon of buzzwords and catchphrases with which to dazzle judges and probation officers at future sentencing hearings.

Mills is correct on one point: Current policies ignore the wishes of most domestic-violence victims. For this, I believe, we should be thankful. You can beat these victims senseless; you can scar them for life; you can torture them for days and reduce their children to whimpering nothings, and still the stories won't change: "I can't live without a man in my life"; "I need his paycheck because I just can't work a job"; "I know he'll change with some counseling"; "It's all my fault." To give these pathetic delusions any credence "empowers" no one. When Mills airily characterizes the lies and excuses of domestic violence as "narratives," she condescends to abusers and abusees more completely than criminal laws ever could.

Criminal laws assign victims and abusers responsibility for their actions and for the truth and falsehood of their words. To Mills, words--and, for that matter, criminal laws--are just tools with which to promote or deny psychological adjustment. At no time does Mills reflect any awareness that spousal abusers should be punished because they are spousal abusers. And yet she advocates mandatory jail (yes, mandatory, thus contradicting the whole point of the book) for men who act violently after enduring her precious Intimate Abuse Circles. To Mills, ignoring the wisdom of the experts seems to be a far more serious crime than attacking others.

Words often substitute for reality in Insult to Injury. For example, Mills argues that women are just as abusive in relationships as men are. How? Mills expands the definition of "intimate abuse" to encompass physical and emotional abuse. And since every wife-beater can grumble some complaint about emotional abuse, then--presto!--women are as abusive as men. To Mills, words are violence, and words can dispel violence. Harry Potter's magic incantations should be so effective.

No left-leaning manifesto on crime could be complete without a little irresponsible pop-psychologizing about the motives of the other side, and Mills obliges. Mainstream feminists oppose her because, owing to "counter-transference," they impose their own hatred of men and need for control onto the victims whom they are supposedly trying to help. It's a pity that Mills never shines her low-wattage light onto herself: By book's end, she confides to us that an ex-boyfriend abused, raped, and stalked her for some time. But it's okay, because "his childhood was marred by suffering" and they "reinforced each other's insecurities and dependence." Her great breakthrough in therapy came when she accepted responsibility for her culpability in being, well, abused, raped, and stalked. For the reality-colored wedge: What do a city in Sweden and Patty Hearst have in common? Don't worry if you don't know. Linda Mills doesn't, either.

For all its pretensions to cutting-edge liberalism, Insult to Injury is surprisingly old-fashioned. It sanitizes every hoary cliche about domestic violence that ever dripped from the lips of the sleaziest defense lawyer. It makes old poisons palatable to a generation of feminists that can't say no to a degradation that calls itself "empowerment." And the right of women to degrade themselves in the manner of their choosing is a right that every wife-beater will cheerfully defend.

Oh, and as for the monster who served six months? His sentence was so short because the victim found a prosecutor who agreed with Linda Mills. His probation was a failure. He never stopped blaming the victim for his crimes.

Such is the world Linda Mills apparently wants for you and your daughters. Reject it.

Mr. Kern is a lawyer and writer residing in Columbus, Ohio. From 2001 to 2003, he was the special prosecutor for violence against women in Clark County, Ohio.