Australasian Prevention and Reduction of Family Violence Policing Strategy 2008

The reduction of family violence is an Australasian policing priority. Family violence has a measurable impact on many individuals, families and communities each day. Policing responses need to be supported and underpinned by interventions at the local, community and government levels.

Despite the wealth of knowledge and tremendous efforts to prevent family violence, more needs to be done to ensure the safety and well being of victims. This includes support through the criminal justice systems.

Multilingual Rights Caution

The translation of the Rights Caution for Adults and Children/Young Persons is designed for immediate, urgent use only where interpreters are not available.

The translations cover 51 different languages and outline a person’s rights when either being questioned or arrested by police officers.

Multilingual Phrase Book

The multilingual phrasebook and rights cautions have been developed to assist police staff communicate with diverse communities. This resource can be used as an effective tool to interact with people where there is a language barrier.

The Multilingual Phrase Book outlines the most frequent questions and statements used by police officers when dealing with the public alongside 49 translated languages.

Six Month Review: Resolution Outcomes

All 13 child assault events involving "smacking" and 65 of the 69 "minor acts of physical discipline" events against children, resulted in a warning or no further Police action.

Of the 69 "minor acts of physical discipline" events against children four were prosecuted as follows:

  • Two were charged with Assault Child (manually)
  • Two were charged with Common Assault

These prosecutions were spread nationally and not concentrated in any one district.

To date resolutions for the above four prosecutions are as follows:

Six Month Review: Discussion

The period following the enactment of the Amendment has been "business as usual" for Police.

The current review period of 29 September 2007 to 4 April 2008 has shown a slight increase in the total volume of 'child assault' events Police have attended: (288), compared with the initial three month review period (111). This is to be expected due to the current review period being six months in comparison to the initial three month review period.

Three Month Review: Resolution Outcomes

  • The majority of the assault events involving "smacking" or "minor acts of physical discipline" resulted in no further Police action or a warning of some sort. Three events resulted in no further Police action, seven events resulted in a warning from Police against the use of "physical force to discipline" their children, and two events resulted in a warning and a specific reminder about the Amendment.
  • In three child assault events, the resolution outcome is not specified on the electronic Police file.

Three Month Review: Discussion

Volume of "smacking", "minor acts of physical discipline" and other assault events

  • The first three months following enactment of the Amendment have identified a small increase in Police activity in attending and/or investigating child assaults matching the original search criteria.5
  • Police attended a total of 111 child assault events (matching the original search criteria),6 15 of which involved "smacking" and "minor acts of physical discipline".
  • This represents a minor increase in the figures for the previous three month period prior to th