EXPERIMENTAL FAMILY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (FDV) EXPLANATORY NOTES

111 This release provides experimental data about defendants finalised in Australian criminal courts for selected Family and Domestic Violence (FDV) related offences.

112 For the purpose of these experimental data, an FDV offence is one that has been identified in the state and territory criminal courts administrative data systems as FDV-related. FDV offences are defined by the relevant legislation in each state and territory.

113 Further work is required to develop and implement uniform standards, classifications and business rules to guide consistent national recording and reporting of FDV offences. As such, these data should be interpreted with caution, taking into account the factors described in these explanatory notes and it is recommended that the statistics in this issue not be compared across jurisdictions.

FAMILY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INDICATOR

114 Depending on the jurisdiction, the data presented in this release are based on an FDV indicator. This indicator has been compiled using a police initiated FDV flag transferred to the criminal courts as recorded by police agencies in their crime recording systems; a criminal courts derived flag using local legislative references; or allocation of a matter to an FDV specialist court list.

115 The FDV indicator used in the following jurisdictions is based on the police FDV flag:

• Victoria;
• Western Australia;
• Northern Territory; and
• Tasmania.

For these jurisdictions the FDV flag is transferred to the courts by police with information recorded by the prosecution

116 In New South Wales, the recording of FDV related offences are governed by the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007. The Act enables an FDV flag to be attached to the defendant record either when the charge is recorded by police or by the court.

117 Queensland Criminal Courts FDV offences are prosecuted under s47 (9) of the Justices Act 1886 for charges lodged in the Magistrates’ Courts, and through reference to s564 (3A) of the Criminal Code Act 1899 for indictments lodged in the Supreme and Districts Courts (this includes Children’s Courts). This legislation was enacted on 1 December 2015. References to these legislation can be added by police in charging, or added or amended by the criminal courts during court proceedings.

The Criminal Law (Domestic Violence) Amendment Act 2016 also introduced ‘Choking, suffocation or strangulation in a domestic setting’ as a separate and new offence to the Criminal Code Act 1899.

In addition to these, ANZSOC Group 1531 Breach of violence order offences are able to be identified as FDV related through reference to the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012 in the charge.

118 For the Australian Capital Territory Criminal Courts; the FDV indicator is applied by the criminal courts if the matter had been flagged as FDV related by police and/or allocated to an FDV specialist court list.

SCOPE AND COVERAGE

119 Data are available for each state and territory, with the exception of South Australia. The South Australian Criminal Courts do not receive the FDV flag and do not have specific FDV legislation that could be used to identify these types of offences.

120 Data are presented for the Higher, Magistrates’ and Children’s Court levels with the exception of Victoria and Tasmania. For these states, Higher Courts data are unavailable for inclusion in this collection (data are presented for the Children’s and Magistrates’ Courts).

121 For the purposes of this publication, FDV related offences are limited to the following offence types:

• Homicide (ANZSOC Division 01);
• Acts intended to cause injury (ANZSOC Division 02);
• Sexual assault (ANZSOC Division 03);
• Other dangerous or negligent acts endangering persons (ANZSOC Sub-division 049);
• Abduction, harassment and other offences against the person (ANZSOC Division 05);
• Property damage (ANZSOC Sub-division 121); and
• Breach of violence order (ANZSOC Sub-division 1531).

122 ANZSOC Sub-division 049 Other dangerous and negligent acts endangering persons were not included in the scope of FDV defendants in the 2015–16 publication. For the 2016-17 publication, data for 2015–16 have been revised to reflect this change.

COUNTING METHODOLOGY

123 The principal counting unit for the Experimental FDV release is the finalised defendant. For more information see paragraph 29.

For the purposes of the Criminal Courts Experimental FDV data, a finalised defendant is defined as having one or more offences flagged as FDV related.

Where a defendant was finalised for multiple FDV related offences during the reference period, they were assigned a principal FDV offence which has been determined based on the Method of Finalisation and National Offence Index ranking of the offences (see Explanatory note 23–25). Any non FDV related offences were excluded prior to the ranking process. Therefore, users should be aware that the statistics presented in data cube 14 are not comparable with other data presented within this publication.

124 Defendants finalised with at least one FDV related offence are also presented as a proportion of the total number of defendants that were finalised for at least one of the selected offences within the same reference period (see paragraph 121). These proportions have been presented in Table 8 in data cube 14.

STATE AND TERRITORY CONSIDERATIONS

125 The following information highlights events or processes unique to a state/territory that may have an impact on the experimental FDV data.

Victoria

126 In Victoria, when a defendant attends court from custody, their records are initiated manually in the court recording system, rather than via the usual automated process which populates the FDV flag from the police system using electronic file transfer. This will result in a lower than expected level of FDV flagging for certain offence types, in particular ANZSOC division 01 Homicide and related offences and 03 Sexual assault and related offences.

127 In December 2015, the Victorian Court Services made changes to their business processes to improve the level of FDV information which flows through (to courts) from Victoria Police administrative systems. In particular, where Sexual assault and related offences had occurred within a Family or Domestic relationship and had been flagged by police using only a Family Violence Sexual Assault indicator (as opposed to the FDV flag), which was not available in the courts data prior to 2016-17. As such, FDV related Sexual assault and related offences may be understated in Victoria in 2015-16. Caution should be used when making historical comparisons.

Western Australia

128 Western Australia Police utilise two separate crime recording systems for information about offenders. Data from one of these systems are used to provide prosecutions information to the Criminal Courts and is the source of data for the ABS Criminal Courts collection. In contrast data from both systems are provided for the Recorded Crime – Offenders collection. Data from both systems are matched to enable the production of offender statistics and associated demographic and offence information for the Recorded Crime – Offenders collection.

CONFIDENTIALITY OF FDV TABULAR DATA

129 Table cells containing small values have been randomly adjusted to avoid releasing confidential information. As such, the sum of the components of a total will not necessarily give the same result as the published total in a particular table.

COMMENT AND FURTHER INFORMATION

130 Users should note that the FDV data contained in this publication are considered to be experimental, and are subject to further evaluation. The ABS is interested in feedback from users of these statistics on any aspect of the release. Please send written feedback to: crime.justice@abs.gov.au.