By Garth Morgan, et al.

First Nations children experience high rates of domestic and family violence and are overrepresented in child protection systems in Australia. The long history of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that commenced with colonisation, the effects of which are still being felt today, significantly contributes to these outcomes. Policies intended to respond to these harms, improve wellbeing, and enhance safety, instead continue to cause harm, rarely providing culturally safe, well-resourced and trauma informed solutions.

This is the second of two reports from the project, Service system responses and culturally designed practice frameworks to address the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children exposed to domestic and family violence. The project used culturally safe, participatory action research methods with First Nations community members in eight regional and remote locations across Queensland to generate new knowledge about what works for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who have both experienced domestic and family violence and had contact with the child protection system. The first report from this project, New ways for our families explored existing literature and presented the findings from the first action research cycles. The final report, You can’t pour from an empty cup presents the findings, conclusions and recommendations from the final rounds of action research.

Significantly, the researchers found that experiencing domestic and family violence negatively impacted childhoods, behaviours and the ability to form healthy relationships as adults. Harms were carried forward into adulthood as these children and young people became parents and moved through systems. As a result many experienced child protection responses that used oppressive and controlling techniques and this increased distress. Research participants identified that there was a lack of focus on providing healing and support services for children and young people who experienced DFV and that service providers were often ill equipped to respond effectively to trauma.

This research provides an understanding of how services and systems including health and education can better hear from and respond to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people who experience domestic and family violence. While conducting the research, and as a result of the initial findings which revealed the depth of cultural knowledge and community led solutions, the research team made the decision to also develop a culturally strong practice framework to guide policymakers and practitioners. The framework, Healing our children and young people: A framework to address the impacts of domestic and family violence is available on the ANROWS website.

ANROWS, 2023. 103p.

By Sana Rehman, Memona Habib, and Saad Bin Tahir

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against men has become a serious and widespread public health issue, but limited research about the occurrence of female-to-male violence is available, as most studies on the subject have focused on female victims only. The study aims to determine the pooled prevalence and predictors of physical, emotional, and sexual violence against men across all recall periods and the potential risk factors of male victimization. Databases of PubMed, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Scopus, Google Scholar, Science Direct, EMBASE, and JSTOR were searched. Data were extracted from studies published in 2010 to 2022. A systematic review and Random effect meta-analyses for the pooled prevalence were performed. Thirty studies with 58,357 participants were included in the final analysis. The pooled prevalence of Physical IPV was 20% (95% CI: 11–28%), Psychological IPV was 44% (95% CI: 30–59%), and Sexual IPV was 7% (95% CI: 3.1–10%) in Victimization for all recall periods, respectively. Findings demonstrated psychological IPV as the most prevalent form of IPV among men, which suggests that effective attempts are required to develop related prevention programs for victims. Furthermore, gender, age, substance abuse, socioeconomic status, multiple sex partners, history of abuse, and childhood victimization were found to be the predictors of IPV among men. Implementations of policies are also needed to reduce IPV. The findings of the study were discussed in terms of counselling and interventions.

Violence and Gender: Volume: 10 Issue 4: December 8, 2023

By Jasmine B. MacDonald, Melissa Willoughby, Pragya Gartoulla, Eliza Cotton, Evita March, Kristel Alla, Cat Strawa

Overview - Coercive control is the ongoing and repetitive use of behaviours or strategies (including physical and non-physical violence) to control a current or ex intimate partner (i.e. victim-survivor) and make them feel inferior to, and dependent on, the perpetrator (Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety [ANROWS], 2021). Coercive control is a relatively new area to policy, practice and research and the research evidence is still emerging. However, AIFS’ consultations with key stakeholders in the child and family sector identified coercive control as a key topic of interest for policy makers and practitioners and that there is a desire for a synthesis of current evidence. This paper synthesises the findings of a rapid literature review to describe what we know about how common coercive control victimisation is, as well as risk factors and impacts of coercive control victimisation. A victim-survivor is someone who has experienced coercive control victimisation (i.e. been the target of coercive control behaviours by a current or ex intimate partner). The term victim-survivor is used to acknowledge ‘the ongoing effects and harm caused by abuse and violence as well as honouring the strength and resilience of people with lived experience of family violence’ (Victorian Government, 2022). The fndings of the rapid literature review are presented in 3 chapters: How common is coercive control victimisation? Risk factors associated with coercive control victimisation Impacts associated with coercive control victimisation. The key findings for each of these results sections are summarised in the subsections below. Please refer to the full chapter for more detail, including the evidence synthesis of relevant research studies and implications for practice, research and policy. Key messages Quality of coercive control victimisation research The studies sampled in this review provide important foundational insights about coercive control victimisation but had some limitations. These limitations were related to the relatively early stage of research on coercive control victimisation and the practical barriers associated with research in a complex area of human experience. Based on our review, we made the following observations about the state of evidence on coercive control victimisation in Australia: ƒ There is a need for research specifc to the Australian context. Only a small proportion of the sampled studies (3 out of 13; 23%) explored Australian experiences. ƒ We currently know little about the unique experiences of: – Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples – people with disability – LGBTQIA+ communities – culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities – people in older age groups (65+ years) – children and young people where there is coercive control between their parents – intersectional experiences across more than one of the above. ƒ There is debate among researchers and experts about what exactly coercive control victimisation is and how it should be conceptualised: Some studies emphasised the gendered nature of coercive control and others did not. – Some studies have not used a measure of coercive control but rather a measure of domestic and family violence (DFV), sometimes from a previous study. In such instances, coercive control victimisation is often considered to be synonymous with the experience of psychological or emotional abuse behaviours as distinct from experiences of physical or sexual violence in the DFV measures. – Others, such as Stark and colleagues (Stark, 2007; Stark & Hester, 2019) and ANROWS (2021), conceptualise coercive control as the context in which intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs, meaning that physical and sexual violence are considered behaviours to enact coercive control (when not occurring in isolated incidence-based abuse). – Most studies (70%) used customised measurements of coercive control victimisation (i.e. measures constructed by the authors for the purpose of the study). Standardised and psychometrically validated measures were used by only 4 of the 13 sampled studies. ƒ Research design diferences between studies make it challenging to: – distinguish between IPV characterised by a coercive control pattern and that which is not – identify coercive control in practice – inform prevention and intervention – know which risk factors and impacts are most robust and deserving of further investigation. ƒ Most studies used a cross-sectional survey method for data collection. These studies cannot demonstrate changes for specific individuals over time or indicate coercive control victimization causing a change in outcomes such as mental health within the sampled participants. A longitudinal research design is required to demonstrate such changes and potential causation. ƒ Studies were also characterized by: – self-report data – large differences in sample sizes – an absence of demographic and other relevant social variables in analyses – a broad range of risk factors and impact measures, with little consistency of measures or replication of findings – a tendency to focus on individual-level factors associated with victimization, without equal consideration of broader institutional or societal levels.

Southbank VIC 3006 Australia Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2024 42p.

By Violence Policy Center

 Intimate partner violence against women is all too common and takes many forms. The most serious is homicide by an intimate partner. Guns can easily turn domestic violence into domestic homicide. One federal study on homicide among intimate partners found that female intimate partners are more likely to be murdered with a firearm than all other means combined, concluding that “the figures demonstrate the importance of reducing access to firearms in households affected by IPV [intimate partner violence].” Guns are also often used in non-fatal domestic violence. A study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers analyzed gun use at home and concluded that “hostile gun displays against family members may be more common than gun use in self-defense, and that hostile gun displays are often acts of domestic violence directed against women.” The U.S. Department of Justice has found that women are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes committed by intimate partners than men, especially when a weapon is involved. Moreover, women are much more likely to be victimized at home than in any other place.5 A woman must consider the risks of having a gun in her home, whether she is in a domestic violence situation or not. While two thirds of women who own guns acquired them “primarily for protection against crime,” the results of a California analysis show that “purchasing a handgun provides no protection against homicide among women and is associated with an increase in their risk for intimate partner homicide.” A 2003 study about the risks of firearms in the home found that females living with a gun in the home were nearly three times more likely to be murdered than females with no gun in the home. Finally, another study reports, women who were murdered were more likely, not less likely, to have purchased a handgun in the three years prior to their deaths, again invalidating the idea that a handgun has a protective effect against homicide. While this study does not focus solely on domestic violence homicide or guns, it provides a stark reminder that domestic violence and guns make a deadly combination. According to reports submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), firearms are rarely used to kill criminals or stop crimes.9 Instead, they are all too often used to inflict harm on the very people they were intended to protect.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center. 2022, 27pg

By Lis Bates and Marianne Hester

This paper assesses the design and use of protection orders for domestic violence in England and Wales. It draws on data from 400 police classified domestic violence incidents and 65 interviews with victims/survivors, as well as new analysis of government justice data from England and Wales, to address a gap in literature on protection orders.

The paper identifies an increasing civil-criminal ‘hybridisation’ of protection orders in England and Wales, and argues that a dual regime has developed, with orders issued by police and/or in criminal proceedings increasingly privileged (and enforced) over victim-led civil orders. Whilst protection orders are being used – as intended – flexibly to protect domestic violence victims, the way they are applied in practice risks downgrading domestic violence in criminal justice terms.

The conclusions are especially timely in light of current Government proposals to rationalise protection orders by introducing a single overarching Domestic Abuse Protection Order in England and Wales.

Bristol, UK: Centre for Gender and Violence Research University of Bristol , 2020. 41p.

By Ana Speed and Kayliegh Richardson

Occupation orders are the dedicated legal remedy through which victims of domestic abuse can be supported to remain in the family home following a relationship breakdown. Case law indicates, however, that victims experience barriers to securing orders due to the high threshold criteria and because concerns about protecting the rights of perpetrators has led to judicial reluctance to grant extensive protection to victims. The options for providing protection to victims of abuse in respect of the family home are shortly set to be reformed by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which creates a new Domestic Abuse Protection Order (DAPO). It is anticipated that DAPOs will be easier to secure because they will have a lower threshold criteria, they will be available in family, civil and criminal proceedings, and both victims and third parties will be able to make an application thereby alleviating the burden on victims who feel unable to take any action. Whilst there is no intention at this point to repeal occupation orders, the Home Office has acknowledged that ‘DAPOs will become the ‘go to’ protective order in cases of domestic abuse’ suggesting that occupation orders will be replaced by DAPOs in most cases.

By drawing on data obtained from an analysis of court statistics, a questionnaire of legal practitioners and domestic abuse specialists, and in-depth interviews with victims of domestic abuse, this paper offers original empirical insights into where the current law fails victims of domestic abuse. The analysis reveals three key barriers to securing occupation orders. Firstly, despite the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 making efforts to preserve legal aid for victims of domestic abuse, the means test is difficult for victims to satisfy, resulting in increases both to the number of victims taking no action to pursue protection and who act as litigants in person in occupation order proceedings. Secondly, the prospects of a victim securing protection can be adversely affected by their unrepresented status. Thirdly, despite case law indicating a less restrictive approach to granting occupation orders, many victims continue to struggle to satisfy the strict threshold criteria. Some judges are seemingly willing to bypass this by granting alternative remedies which may offer victims a weaker form of protection in respect of the family home. Where orders are granted, the data suggest this is on restricted terms and for limited durations which reduce their effectiveness at preventing post-separation abuse and supporting victims to regulate their short and longer-term housing situation. These empirical findings are then situated within a discussion of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The authors analyse whether forthcoming DAPOs are likely to offer a more accessible and effective form of protection than occupation orders. The analysis suggests that by increasing the scope of applicants, the breadth and flexibility of available protection and the sanctions for breach, DAPOs have the potential to remedy many of the existing barriers to securing protection over the family home. As is always the case with new legislation however, the key will be in its implementation, to ensure that existing issues are not simply transferred across to the new regime. The findings are novel because academic commentaries on protective injunctions typically focus on ‘personal protection’ offered by non-molestation orders, domestic violence protection orders, and restraining orders, meaning that both occupation orders and protection for victims in respect of the family home are under-researched areas of domestic abuse.

Journal of Criminal Law Volume 86, Issue 3 Jun 2022 Pages 145-220

By Georgina Heydon, Nicola Henry, Rachel Loney-Howes and Sophie Hind

Anonymous reporting tools for sexual assault contribute to gathering intelligence, reducing crime, increasing reporting and supporting survivors. This article examines victim-survivors’ knowledge of and experiences using alternative reporting options, drawing on data collected from a broader study of alternative reporting options for sexual assault. Focus groups with victim-survivors and interviews with support service staff reveal that survivors and support staff are unclear about how authorities use data from alternative reporting tools but can identify preferred designs for a form. Victim-survivors in particular strongly support having an alternative reporting option available.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 678. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 17p.

By Ben Mathews, Nina Papalia, Sarah Napier, Eva Malacova, David Lawrence, Daryl J Higgins, Hannah Thomas, Holly Erskine, Franziska Meinck, Divna Haslam, James Scott, David Finkelhor and Rosana Pacella

Few studies have examined associations between child maltreatment and criminal justice system involvement using large nationally representative samples and comprehensive measures of self‑reported maltreatment. This study analyses nationally representative data from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study, which surveyed 8,500 Australians to obtain self-reported data on all five child maltreatment types (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to domestic violence) and criminal justice system involvement. We examine associations between self-reported child maltreatment, and chronic multi-type maltreatment, and arrests, convictions and imprisonment. Results show moderate associations between child maltreatment and arrests and convictions, and between maltreatment and imprisonment among men. Stronger associations were found for those experiencing three or more types of maltreatment.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 681. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2023. 21p

By Susan Baidawi, Rubini Ball, Rosemary Sheehan and Nina Papalia

This paper outlines a retrospective follow-up study of all Victorian children aged 10 to 13 years with police contact for alleged offending in 2017 (N=1,369). The sample comprised relatively few 10- and 11-year-olds, while boys and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were over-represented. Most alleged offending was non-violent (71%), particularly among 10-year-olds (82%). Most matters did not proceed to court (80%), including 55 percent of matters which received police cautions. Of matters proceeding to court, 37 percent were struck out or dismissed, and a further 53 percent had outcomes not involving youth justice supervision. Half of children (49%) had no alleged offending in the following two years.

Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 679. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. 2024. 21p

By James Ogilvie, Lisa Thomsen, Jodie Barton, et L.

This is the second and final report to be produced from the “Adverse childhood experiences and the intergenerational transmission of domestic and family violence in young people who engage in harmful sexual behaviour and violence against women” project.

Building on work completed in the first report which analysed a small subset of cases, the authors have used two large existing datasets that coded information relating to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) for male youth in Queensland who had committed an offence. The two data sets were Queensland Youth Justice records of proven offences (n=6,047) and clinical information maintained by Griffith Youth Forensic Services (GYFS) relating to young men who had been referred to services after perpetrating sexual offences (n=377). The analysis outlined the prevalence of specific ACEs by offence type (YJ dataset) and contrasted the prevalence of ACEs across male youth with and without histories of DFV (GYFS dataset); descriptive presentation ; descriptive analysis of group differences (sexual vs. non-sexual offending); and multivariate models to examine links between DFV and offending.

The report found that across both datasets, ACES were highly prevalent among young men who went on to commit sexual offences. They were also more likely to have experienced co-occurring ACEs. Young men who had been adjudicated for sexual offences were especially likely to have experienced DFV as children.

These findings provide an evidence base for designing program and policy responses for young men who have encountered the youth justice system.

These findings indicate that ACEs occur within a context of gender-based violence. Policy responses drawing on this evidence should prioritise early intervention and promote protective factors applied within a trauma and DFV informed practice framework.

Sydney: Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited (ANROWS), 2022. 64p

By Betty Luu, Amy Conley Wright, Stefanie Schurer, Laura Metcalfe

In a data first, this ANROWS report, released in partnership with researchers from the University of Sydney, highlights approximately 33% of all reports to NSW’s Child Protection Helpline express concerns about a child experiencing domestic and family violence, either alone or in conjunction with parental mental health and or substance use issues.

The research uses the newly established NSW Human Services Dataset to see how families interact with a range of services, including police, child protection and health, over time. The analysis focuses on cases reported to the NSW Child Protection Helpline, unveiling the challenges families experience with domestic and family violence, alongside parental mental health or parental substance use issues.

The findings also confirm that domestic and family violence, parental substance use and parental mental health issues are strongly interlinked and contribute to children being placed in out-of-home care, with findings suggesting that the odds of a child being removed double when all three issues are present.

Sydney, Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS), 2024.89P.

by Laura L. Miller, Dmitry Khodyakov, Joachim O. Hero, Lisa Wagner, Coreen Farris, Katie Feistel, Emily Dao, Julia Rollison, Rosemary Li, Jamie Ryan, et al.

Domestic abuse is among many harmful behaviors of concern to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) because of its consequences for military personnel, their families, and military readiness. RAND's National Defense Research Institute is conducting a multi-year research effort, requested by Congress in Section 546C of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, to study domestic abuse from a variety of perspectives.

In the first phase of this study, the RAND team focused its work on identifying strategies that can help DoD and the Services prevent domestic abuse among service members and their spouses or partners before it occurs and strategies that could be effective in the military environment for outreach and communication to individuals who might have risk factors for domestic abuse.

The prevention and outreach strategies highlighted in this research were synthesized from recommendations made by 80 experts — domestic abuse survivor experts and advocates, military program or service providers and practitioners, military leaders, and domestic abuse scholars — and a scoping review of relevant literature published in the past two decades.

Key Findings

• Both the expert panel and scoping review results pointed to the need for prevention strategies to address not only individual and relationship risk factors but also the broader social, cultural, and systemic factors, such as social isolation and perceived tolerance of domestic abuse.

• A comprehensive prevention approach would include strategies that fall outside the primary purview of DoD's Family Advocacy Program (FAP) and would require contributions from, for example, the Office of Force Resiliency, the Military Health Agency, training commands, military leaders, community organizations, and military offices tasked with preventing other problematic behaviors.

• Experts cautioned against risk factors being treated as excuses or causal factors for domestic abuse, domestic abuse material becoming too diluted by other content, and non-subject-matter experts addressing sensitive domestic abuse topics.

• Across discussions of strategies, experts noted that existing installation-level staffing, expertise, and resources were insufficient to implement some recommendations. This concern encompassed not only the capacity of FAP but also other potential key actors, such as counselors and medical staff.

• Nearly half of the research studies in this scoping review focused on domestic abuse prevention strategies to educate and teach skills to individuals, couples, and families, and those focused on relationship and individual skills were the most common. Most studies of relationship skills strategies showed a positive impact on reducing the occurrence of domestic abuse.

Recommendations

• Teach safe and healthy relationship skills by developing a military-specific domestic abuse prevention curriculum for service members and their spouses or partners, expanding the types of services available to support individuals and couples struggling with relationship and parenting issues, and addressing abusive leadership behaviors in the workplace and providing guidance on military-appropriate leadership skills that are not well-suited at home.

• Engage influential community members by (1) preparing military leaders to actively participate in prevention activities and conveying the expectation that leaders will participate and (2) engaging peers and survivors in planning, implementing, and assessing domestic abuse prevention education, training, and information awareness campaigns.

• Create protective environments by focusing on spouse and partner supports and community integration to counter isolation and dependency risk factors, and improve prevention by increasing efforts to hold perpetrators convicted of the crime of domestic violence and leaders accountable for their actions or inaction following a domestic violence conviction.

• Strengthen economic supports for families by coordinating and promoting efforts to help relieve economic risk factors for domestic abuse and reduce economic control in relationships.

• Strengthen the prevention system by increasing the number of prevention and education specialists and providers to increase capacity to focus on prevention before domestic abuse occurs and integrating domestic abuse prevention activities within other violence prevention programs to reduce risk factors.

• Measure, monitor, and evaluate prevention activities by collecting data on domestic abuse prevention activities and resources and conduct surveys with service members, spouses or partners, and users of domestic abuse prevention resources.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 107p.

By Min-Taec Kim and George Karystianis (UNSW)
AIM To construct a measure of coercive control behaviours from free-text narratives recorded by the NSW Police Force for each domestic violence event, and to assess how useful this measure might be in detecting coercive control behaviours when combined with existing measures and/ or predicting which events are followed by violence within 12 months. METHOD We developed a text-mining system to capture a (non-exhaustive) set of behaviours that could be used to exert coercive control. Our text mining system consisted of a set of rules and dictionaries, with our definition of ‘coercive control behaviours’ drawn from Stark (2007). We concentrated on behaviours that were not already well captured by fixed fields in the police system. We applied this text mining system across all police narratives of domestic violence events recorded between 1 January 2009 and 31 March 2020, and used this data to construct our measure of coercive control behaviour. We then compared the incidence of coercive control behaviours using our measure against existing incident categories (where they exist). Finally, we estimated a gradient boosted decision tree (xgboost) model three times (once with standard predictors, once with just our coercive control measure, and once with both sets of variables included) and compared the performance of each model. This allowed us to estimate the contribution of our measure for improving the prediction of future violence. RESULTS There were 852,162 behaviours extracted by the text-mining system across 526,787 domestic violence events, with 57% of these events having at least one coercive control behaviour detected and 8% having three or more distinct subcategories of coercive control behaviours. These events were associated with 223,645 unique persons of interest. Our text mining system agreed with the pre-existing police incident categories (where they exist) in 80 to 99% of cases, with the text mining approach identifying an additional 30 to 60% of events that were not identified using the police incident categories, depending on the behaviour. The inclusion of the text mining variables did not improve the performance of our predictive model. CONCLUSION Our text mining system successfully extracted coercive control behaviours from police narratives, allowing us to identify how often these events are recorded in police narratives and supplement existing police categories of DV behaviours. Use of our measure in conjunction with existing incident categories significantly expands our ability to identify coercive control behaviours, however it does not improve our ability to predict which events are followed by further domestic violence.  

Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB260. No. 26o
Sydney:  NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. 2023. 28p.

By Stephanie Ramsey, Min-Taec Kim and Jackie Fitzgerald  
AIM This paper describes the significant rise in incidents of domestic violence-related stalking and intimidation recorded in NSW over the 10 years to 2021 and their passage through the criminal justice system. METHOD Characteristics of stalking/intimidation incidents from 2012 to 2021 were collated from the NSW Police and Criminal Courts databases. We focus on those flagged as ‘domestic violencerelated’. Additional information about these incidents was obtained through text mining 12,676 police domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation narratives. RESULTS Key findings: • Domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents recorded by NSW Police increased 110 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 8,120 to 17,063). • Police legal proceedings for domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation incidents increased 163.8 per cent from 2012 to 2021 (from 4,469 to 11,789). • Domestic violence-related ‘stalking/intimidation’ typically involves threats, intimidation and verbal abuse (not stalking). • Court appearances including a domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation charge increased 63.8 percent from 2014 to 2021 (from 3,562 to 5,836). • Courts consider domestic violence-related stalking/intimidation seriously, with one in eight offenders sentenced to a custodial penalty. The number of custodial sentences increased 96.1% from 2014 to 2021 (from 311 to 610). • The increase in stalking/intimidation has had a pronounced effect on Aboriginal people who accounted for 28% of court finalisations and 52% of custodial penalties in 2021. The number of Aboriginal people receiving a custodial penalty increased 101% in eight years from 158 in 2014 to 317 in 2021. CONCLUSION The substantial increase in stalking/intimidation offences in the criminal justice system seems more likely to reflect changes in the police response to domestic violence rather than a change in criminal behaviour. 
  (Bureau Brief No. 159).
 Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2022. 19p.

By Felix Leung and Lily Trimboli
Background

Previous research has shown that the NSW Police Force’s Domestic Violence Safety Assessment Tool, the DVSAT, has poor predictive accuracy in discriminating those who experience intimate partner re-victimisation from those who do not (Ringland, 2018). The aim of this study was to develop a tool with better predictive accuracy than the DVSAT. Using police data on 234,454 incidents of intimate partner violence recorded between January 2016 and December 2018, we evaluated four predictive models of intimate partner re-victimisation:
• NRAP-all: a model with all 16 risk factors identified in the National Risk Assessment Principles (NRAP) developed by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS);
• NRAP-10: a model with only the 10 high-risk factors identified by ANROWS in the NRAP;
• SAFVR: the Static Assessment of Family Violence Recidivism (SAFVR), developed by the New Zealand Police; and
• DVSAT-8: a model with the eight items from the NSW DVSAT that are most predictive of repeat victimisation.

Key findings

Of the four models, only the two NRAP models had acceptable predictive performance (i.e., with an Area under the Curve (AUC) above 0.7). The model with the highest AUC was the NRAP model that combined all 16 risk factors identified by ANROWS (with an average AUC of 0.732). When tested on unseen data, its out-of-sample AUC was similar, at 0.738. The simpler NRAP-10 model performed only slightly worse with an average AUC of 0.728.
Further analysis found that the best performing NRAP model could be simplified, with almost no loss in predictive performance. Of the 16 risk factors in the NRAP model, a simplified model using only the best five predictors delivered an out-of-sample AUC of 0.734.

(Crime and Justice Bulletin No. 244).    

Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crimes Statistics and Research, 2022. 27p.

By Adam Teperski and Stewart Boiteux

AIM To examine whether longer apprehended domestic violence orders (ADVO) are associated with changes in domestic violence (DV) offending and ADVO breaches. METHOD A dataset of 13,717 defendants who were placed on an ADVO after a DV incident between January 2016 and April 2018 was extracted from the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics and Research’s ADVO database. This included 10,820 defendants subject to a final 12-month order, and 2,897 defendants subject to a final 24-month order. We utilised an entropy balancing matching approach to ensure groups of defendants subjected to differing ADVO lengths were comparable and implemented an event study analysis to examine quarterly differences in offending outcomes in the three years after the start of the order. In doing so, we were able to examine relative differences in offending in the first 12 months (where both groups were subject to an ADVO), the second 12 months (where only the 24-month ADVO group were subject to an ADVO), and the third 12 months (where neither group were subject to an ADVO). RESULTS In the 12 to 24 month period, where ADVOs with a longer duration were active and shorter ADVOs were not, longer ADVOs were associated with increased breach offending and decreased DV offending. Specifically, in the 5th, 6th and 7th quarters after the beginning of a final order we observed 3.4 percentage points (p.p.), 4.1 p.p., and 2.3 p.p. increases in defendants breaching their ADVO, respectively. When considering baseline rates of breaching, this represents relative increases of 79% to 161%. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th quarters after the beginning of a finalised order, longer ADVOs were associated with respective 1.8 p.p., 2.0 p.p., and 3.1 p.p. decreases in DV offending, reflecting relative decreases in DV offending by 41% to 59%. We find no group differences in DV offending or breaches in the subsequent 12 months, when ADVOs for both groups had expired. While the study examined multiple factors related to both longer ADVO length and offending, we cannot exclude the possibility that unobserved factors may be influencing our results. CONCLUSION Relative to 12-month ADVOs, 24-month ADVOs were associated with an increase in the probability that an offender breaches the conditions of their ADVO, and a decrease in the probability that an offender commits a proven DV offence.
Crime and Justice Bulletin No. CJB261; no. 221
Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2023. 34p.

By Kathleen Foley SC Chair, et al.

The Board of Inquiry has found that the Department woefully failed to protect children from the risk of child sexual abuse at Beaumaris Primary School and certain other government schools between 1960 and 1994. The failings were serious and systemic and put many children at risk of sexual abuse.

Child sexual abuse is abhorrent. It can have life-long effects for victim-survivors. It can affect people’s mental health and well-being, relationships, and education and employment outcomes in ways that are profound and enduring. For some people, the weight of trauma can be too heavy to bear, and their loss causes deep grief for those left behind. The impacts are not confined to victim-survivors but extend to their loved ones, those who witnessed the child sexual abuse, and the broader community.

Despite the challenges, healing is possible. The Board of Inquiry heard about many experiences of personal healing from victim-survivors and their families — examples of courage and examples of hope. There were also many experiences shared about difficulties in finding the right help when it was desperately needed. It is important to understand the factors that contribute to healing and recovery, so that healing and recovery are within reach of all who need it.

The Board of Inquiry has examined the past to identify and understand historical wrongs. In addition, examining the past enables the broader community to move forward. By understanding where the education system failed, we can also better understand how to prevent further child sexual abuse occurring in government schools.

The report comprises six parts:

• The preliminary material contains, in addition to this executive summary, the official documents connected to the delivery of the report, and a message from the Chair.

• Part A, The Board of Inquiry, describes the establishment of the Board of Inquiry, explains how it approached its work, and contains important information concerning how it interpreted and applied the Terms of Reference.

• Part B, Experience, places children’s safety in context by describing relevant policy settings and social and cultural factors present in communities between 1960 and 1999, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, before documenting experiences of child sexual abuse and its impacts from the perspective of victim-survivors. This Part also includes 15 narratives from victim-survivors, secondary victims and affected community members in which they recall their experiences, in their own words.

• Part C, Accountability, describes the education system between 1960 and 1999. It includes the narratives of four of the relevant employees who were examined in depth by the Board of Inquiry, explores concepts of grooming and disclosure, and outlines various system failings by the Department at that time. It then describes how child safety settings within government schools have since improved.

• Part D, Healing, support and the future, describes the factors that promote recovery from child sexual abuse and the support services currently available to victim-survivors of historical child sexual abuse in government schools. It then explores barriers to effective support and how they could be addressed as part of an overall approach to healing. This Part includes the Board of Inquiry’s recommendations for the Victorian Government and the Department to support healing and address barriers to effective support. While these recommendations are drawn from the entirety of the Board of Inquiry’s work, they are particularly directed to the ‘healing’ and ‘support services’ aspects of the Terms of Reference.

• Part E, Appendices, contains a range of documents to assist and inform readers.

Melbourne: Government of Victoria, 2024. 466p.

By Gadda Salhab, Lucy Akehurst, Hannah Cassidy, Victoria Talwar

Purpose: This two-phase study employed a mixed-methods design to explore UK police officers' perceptions and experiences of promoting honesty in child witnesses with a special focus on the recommended inclusion of Truth-Lies Discussions (TLDs) at the start of interviews with children.Method: In Phase 1, police officers completed an online survey designed to cover their experiences and perceptions regarding truth-promotion with child witnesses. In Phase 2, police officers were individually interviewed to elicit an in-depth understanding of current practice relating to this aspect of investigative interviews with children.Results: Around half of the survey respondents believed that TLDs promote honesty in children. The majority reported always using TLDs during interviews to ensure compliance with UK best-practice guidance. There was evidence of a misconception among some police officers that children's performance on TLDs was related to their subsequent truth-telling behavior. Following analysis of the interview transcripts, we found a main theme of police officers' uses of TLDs, which included (i) gauging children's conceptual understanding of truths/lies, (ii) ensuring no deviation from guidance and (iii) communicating children's credibility to the court. A second main theme revealed the challenges and obstacles police officers perceived when embarking on TLDs. These were that (i) one type of TLD is not suitable for all children, (ii) the training is insignificant and the application is inappropriate and (iii) participants sometimes use alternative strategies to promote honesty with children.

Legal and Criminological Psychology Volume 29, Issue 1 Feb 2024

By Rúna í Baianstovu and Sofia Strid

Summary: It is widely accepted that honor-based violence is a lived reality and a serious problem. However, honor-based violence is also a contested academic and political field, characterized by a polarized debate about whether or not the violence comprises stereotyping images of immigrants. This article asks how honor-based violence can be understood in light of this polarization, and what consequences it may have for clients and social workers. It is based on interview data with 235 adults with either professional (n = 199) or personal experiences (n = 36) of honor-based violence in Sweden. The data has been thematically coded and analyzed using the concepts of culturalization and intersectionality.

Findings: Honor-based violence is simultaneously a lived reality and teeming with stereotypes that are constructed by culturalizing images of nation, gender, age, religion, and sexuality. These stereotypes constitute forms of violence themselves and decrease clients’ trust in society and its institutions. Hence, the stereotypes become obstacles to social workers’ capacity to support those exposed to violence. At a general level, the stereotypes contribute to retaining the exposed in violence. In contrast, intersectional approaches to understanding honor-based violence have the potential to capture clients’ self-perceived and complex formulations of the causes of, and the character of, their situation, and thus increase the possibilities for adequate support.

Applications: The article's findings can support social workers’ understanding of the complexity of honor-based violence and strengthen their possibilities and capacities to develop antiracist and nonviolent communicative practices and, thus, acknowledge clients’ varying experiences and individual needs.

By Kristen Budd, Sabrina Pearce and Niki Monazzam

Sexual violence in America remains a systemic social problem but excessive prison sentences do not address the root causes nor do they necessarily repair harm or bolster accountability. The misdirection of resources toward extreme punishment does little to prevent sexual violence. Since the 1990s, individuals convicted of sex crimes or sex offenses, which we call crimes of a sexual nature (CSN), have been subjected to an increased use of incarceration and longer sentences. They on average serve a greater percentage of their prison sentence compared to those sentenced for other crimes classified as violent, such as murder. The first federal law was also passed establishing state sex offense registries in 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Act.

This escalation in punishment severity and community surveillance occurred alongside two opposing long-term trends. First, recidivism rates for CSN in the United States have declined by roughly 45% since the 1970s. This drop started well before the implementation of public registration and notification, implying that the lifelong punishment approach was not responsible for this decline. Second, based on roughly three decades of nationally representative U.S. criminal victimization data (1993-2021), the number of rape and sexual assault victimizations decreased by approximately 65%. Yet, reactions to CSN continue to evoke failed policies of the past – statutorily increasing minimum and maximum sentences and requiring more time served before release – major contributors to mass incarceration.

This brief uses the term “crimes of a sexual nature” (CSN) to describe what are legally defined as “sex crimes” or “sex offenses.” While we do use similar terms interchangeably in this brief, The Sentencing Project recommends the use of “crimes of a sexual nature” to minimize labeling effects and potential cognitive bias.

Washington DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024. 14p.