Policing intimate partner violence in Victoria (Australia): Examining police attitudes and the potential of specialisation
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865816679686 |
| Author | Kate Fitz-Gibbon,Dean Wilson,Marie Segrave |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2018, Vol. 51(1) 99–116
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865816679686
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Article
Policing intimate partner
violence in Victoria (Australia):
Examining police attitudes and
the potential of specialisation
Marie Segrave
Monash University, Australia
Dean Wilson
University of Sussex, UK
Kate Fitz-Gibbon
Monash University, Australia
Abstract
The adequacy of police responses to intimate partner violence has long animated scholarly
debate, review and legislative change. While there have been significant shifts in community
recognition of and concern about intimate partner violence, particularly in the wake of the
Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence, it nonetheless remains a significant form of
violence and harm across Australian communities and a key issue for police, as noted in the
report and recommendations of the Royal Commission. This article draws on findings from
semi-structured interviews (n ¼163) with police in Victoria and pursues two key inter-
related arguments. The first is that police attitudes towards incidents of intimate partner
violence remain overwhelmingly negative. Despite innovations in policy and training, we
suggest that this consistent dissatisfaction with intimate partner violence incidents as a poli-
cing task indicates a significant barrier, possibly insurmountable, to attempts to reform the
policing of intimate partner violence via force-wide initiatives and the mobilisation of general
duties for this purpose. Consequently, our second argument is that specialisation via a com-
mitment to dedicated intimate partner violence units – implemented more consistently and
comprehensively than Victoria Police has to date – extends the greatest promise for effective
policing of intimate partner violence in the future.
Keywords
Intimate partner violence, police culture, policing, specialist police, victims
Date received: 1 April 2016; accepted: 26 October 2016
Corresponding author:
Marie Segrave, Criminology, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, 20 Chancellors Walk, Clayton, Victoria
3800, Australia.
Email: marie.segrave@monash.edu
There have been significant criminal justice interventions in the area of intimate partner
violence (hereinafter IPV)
1
over the last decade, including support and prevention meas-
ures, legislative change and policy innovation. Recently, the issue has catapulted to
become a major national priority in Australia: in 2014 family violence was declared a
‘national emergency’ (Malone & Phillips, 2014), and in 2015 Prime Minister Malcolm
Turnbull committed $100 million to combating IPV (Ireland, 2015). The elevation to the
top of the national agenda has largely been driven by recent cases where children and
women have been murdered by current or former partners (e.g. Bowden, 2015). This has
led to questioning the cultural attitudes that sustain this violence (Diemer & Webster,
2014; VicHealth, 2014), and also the efficacy of existing criminal justice interventions,
including particular scrutiny of police responses to IPV (Blumer, 2015; RCFV, 2015,
2016; Goldsworthy, 2015; Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence, 2015). It
is clear that while the criminal justice system, policy makers, advocates and researchers
grapple with innovative responses that will allow more traditional styles of reactive
intervention to be superseded, policing will remain a critical component of the suite of
interventions required (RCFV, 2016). In order to examine IPV and the role of police,
research on police experience – such as the research we draw on – is essential, as it
enables a perspective on IPV within the broader remit of policing and provides a strong
platform from which to advocate for specific and informed policing strategies. This
article aims to offer a timely contribution to the analysis of the role of police, within
the context of a broader community and political commitment to disrupting the alarm-
ing persistence of IPV and the collateral damage it leaves in its wake.
This article focuses specifically on police, and in particular general duties
2
police, and
their experiences working with incidents of IPV and how these experiences inform atti-
tudes and actions within a particular organisational culture. It draws on data arising
from a broader research project examining the police–victim interface (Segrave &
Wilson, 2011). As we detail below, IPV was raised consistently by participants, and
we focus here on these data as they offer insight into police experiences and attitudes
in relation to policing IPV. We note at the outset that policing does not offer a solution
to IPV, and this is not our focus. Nor are we focused on the debate regarding the
appropriateness or otherwise of pro-arrest policies (cf. Stewart, 2001). Rather we wish
to highlight that, despite decades of research regarding police attitudes towards victim-
isation in the context of IPV, there remain persistent police attitudes towards this crime
type. We offer some insight into these attitudes from an organisational and operational
perspective. This article illuminates how police attitudes mapped decades ago in relation
to IPV remain largely unchanged. Generally, IPV and victims of IPV are considered by
police as a burden, notwithstanding the consistent articulation of participants’ commit-
ment to always maintaining professionalism. Responding to IPV can contribute signifi-
cantly to dissatisfaction and/or frustration with the experience of policing. We consider
the possibility of a specific form of specialisation and lay the groundwork for rethinking
the current model of efforts to improve the police response to IPV: education, improved
police incident response and family violence screening practices. Before we turn to the
findings, we provide a review of policy and data on IPV, followed by a selective survey of
current scholarship on policing and IPV and an overview of the Victoria policing and
policy setting. We then outline the broader research project design, before turning to the
findings and their implications.
100 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 51(1)
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