4513.0 - Criminal Courts, Australia, 2017-18 
Quality Declaration
Quality Declaration ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/02/2019
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EXPERIMENTAL FAMILY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE STATISTICS
The types of relationships involved in FDV can include (but are not limited to):
123 Differences in the state and territory legislation used to determine the types of behaviours and relationships that constitute a family and domestic violence offence should be taken into account when interpreting data in this publication (see paragraphs 126–127). How is FDV defined in this publication? 124 The FDV data published in this collection are based on information recorded in the state and territory court administrative systems. FDV offences are identified based on an indicator (or ‘flag’) that is recorded by either the police and/or courts, as follows: 125 In Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania, police officers flag FDV offences, following investigation/charging, on their crime recording systems, and this is transferred through to courts administrative systems. 126 In New South Wales and Queensland, FDV offences are identified based on FDV-specific legislation and are flagged either by police or when the matter is dealt with by the court. The related legislation includes:
127 In the Australian Capital Territory, FDV offences are identified and flagged either by police (following investigation/charging), or where the court list hearing type is ‘Family Violence’ (FV). 128 Given these differences in how FDV offences are identified or defined, direct comparisons of the state/territory FDV data presented in this publication should not be made. 129 Further, the comparability of FDV data may vary across time periods – both within and across states and territories – due to a number of factors including:
What FDV offences are presented? 130 For the purposes of this publication, FDV offences are limited to the following ANZSOC Division/Sub-division offences:
Refer to Appendix 1 for the full ANZSOC classification. 131 It should be noted that the differences in how FDV offences are identified, charged by police and dealt with in the courts system (described above) can impact on the offence data presented in this publication. For example, the way in which Breach of violence orders are charged and prosecuted by police can differ across states and territories, thereby resulting in issues of data comparability for the breach offences, as well as other associated offence data. COUNTING METHODOLOGY 132 The principal counting unit for the experimental FDV statistics presented in this publication (as per the main suite of information) is the finalised defendant - a person for whom all charges in a case have been formally completed in one or more court levels during the reference period. Specifically, this refers to any defendant who has been finalised for at least one FDV-related offence during the reference period. 133 Where a defendant has had multiple FDV offences finalised on the same day during the reference period within the same court level, they will be counted once and assigned a principal FDV offence based on their most serious method of finalisation and the National Offence Index (NOI) (cat no. 1234.0.55.001). 134 Where a defendant had multiple FDV offences finalised on different days or within different court levels, during the reference period, they will be counted once for each date and/or court level in which they were finalised and are assigned a principal FDV offence for each finalisation. 135 Non-FDV offences (i.e. those that are not flagged) are excluded from the experimental statistics prior to the ranking of the most serious offence. As such, FDV principal offence data are not directly comparable with principal offence data presented elsewhere in this publication. 136 To enable comparison, the total number of defendants finalised for each of the selected offences (as described in paragraph 130) are presented in Data Cube 14 – FDV Table 1, alongside a proportion of those which were FDV related. STATE/TERRITORY SPECIFIC ISSUES 137 This section describes state and territory specific events or processes (e.g. recording practices or legislation changes) that may impact on the availability, and/or comparability of state and territory FDV data. New South Wales 138 In New South Wales, FDV offences can be identified either by the associated legislative reference (refer to paragraph 126), or when the courts make an ‘Offence to be recorded as a domestic violence offence’ order. The flagging of offences against Commonwealth legislation can only be made by the courts through such an order. While this process is open to the courts, these orders are (currently) rarely applied to Commonwealth offences, resulting in lower than expected levels of flagging for some offence types – particularly offences in ANZSOC Division 05 Abduction/harassment. Victoria 139 In Victoria, when a defendant attends court from custody, their records are initiated manually in the court recording system. As such, the FDV flag – which is recorded in the police system and automatically transferred to the court system (refer paragraph 125) – is not applied to these defendants’ court records. This results in a lower than expected level of FDV flagging for certain offence types, in particular ANZSOC Divisions 01 Homicide and related offences and 03 Sexual assault and related offences. 140 Prior to 2017-18, FDV information from the Higher Courts in Victoria were unavailable due to systems limitations, however are included for the first time in this release. 141 Prior to December 2015, information on FDV offences flowing from the Victorian Police recording systems to the Victorian Court Services did not include FDV sexual assault offences (identifiable via a Family Violence Sexual Assault (FVSA) Indicator. As such, data about FDV related sexual assault may be understated in Victoria prior to 2016–17. Queensland 142 The Queensland government has enacted a raft of new domestic violence legislation which included, from December 2015, the ability to record when criminal offending is FDV-related, and in May 2016 introduced a new FDV offence of ‘choking, suffocation or strangulation in a domestic setting’. Increased penalties for FDV offenders were introduced in October 2015. To account for these changes, FDV data are only published for Queensland from 2016–17 onward. South Australia 143 FDV data for South Australia are not included in this publication due to system limitations in the South Australian Criminal Courts. However the ABS continues to work with the data provider to obtain FDV information for inclusion in future releases. Western Australia 144 Information relating to FDV offenders is recorded by Western Australia Police on two separate crime recording systems - the Information Management System (IMS) and Briefcase. Only data from Briefcase transfers through to the criminal courts administrative systems. As such, statistics about FDV defendants for Western Australia may be understated. Tasmania 145 Prior to 2017–18, FDV information from the Higher Courts in Tasmania were unavailable due to systems limitations, however are included for the first time in this release. CONFIDENTIALITY OF FDV DATA 146 In line with ABS policy on data confidentiality, table cells containing small values have been randomly adjusted. 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. FURTHER INFORMATION 147 Users should note that the FDV data contained in this publication are considered to be experimental and are subject to further evaluation. The ABS welcomes and appreciates feedback from users of these statistics on any aspect of the release. Please send written feedback to: crime.justice@abs.gov.au. 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