Emotional intelligence training for justice operators facing domestic violence against women: an educational reading of the law

Abstract

This article aims to analyze, from an educational perspective, how training —or the lack of training— in socio-emotional intelligence affects the performance of justice operators in cases of domestic violence against women in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia. The study adopted a historical-hermeneutical paradigm with a qualitative approach. The inductive method and a descriptive design were used. The participants were selected through purposive sampling and consisted of a family court commissioner's office in the city of Barranquilla and ten women who were victims of domestic violence. The instruments used were the semi-structured interview, the survey, and documentary analysis. The study identified consistent emotional patterns among the ten participants: environments of permanent tension, aggressors dominated by anger and jealousy, and victims who lost autonomy and self-confidence as a result of fear and emotional dependency. Statistics from the Barranquilla District Government for 2025 recorded more than 7,000 psychosocial interventions and more than 4,300 provisional protection orders issued to women victims of violence. Read through an educational lens, these findings show that the emotional intelligence training received by some justice operators functions as a protective factor in their performance, while its absence as a mandatory curricular content in undergraduate law programs constitutes a formative gap with direct consequences for the quality of the administration of justice. In conclusion, it is argued that emotional intelligence must be incorporated as a mandatory curricular competency —rather than a complementary or elective content— both in higher-education legal training programs and in the continuing-education processes for family commissioners and judges..