Discussion document on review of family violence laws to be released

Justice Minister Amy Adams has announced that a discussion paper on proposed changes to family violence laws will be released this Wednesday 5 August.

Ms Adams spoke about the review on TVNZ programme Q & A on 2 August 2015.

Ms Adams said the intention of the document is "to really start a pretty ground up discussion about what can we do better, because as you said in your intro, these figures are too high, and despite a number of initiatives over many years by a wide range of people, we’re not getting enough of a cut through, and I don’t think most New Zealanders want to live in a country where half of all our homicides are from people you love."

Ms Adams said "I think we need to look at how family violence differs from other sort of offending. You don’t have just a simple assault where you walk down the street and a fight starts, and it’s very much a one-off event. Family violence tends to be a whole pattern of abuse over a long period of time, and the law doesn’t deal very well with looking at a pattern of behaviour and control."

Ms Adams said ideas canvassed in the discussion include the creation of a specific family violence offence. She said, "… at the moment, when you’re convicted of a family violence offence, you’re actually just convicted of assault or homicide. There’s no particular class of family violence offence. So why does that matter? Well, it matters in a couple of ways. One, it makes it really hard to track where family violence is occurring, collect pictures of repeat victimisation and high-risk offenders. But secondly, it sends a different signal, I think, when you’re dealing with an offence that’s a complete abuse of trust."

The Minister indicated the review will also consider related legislation such as the Care of Children Act 2004, the Bail Act 2000 and the Sentencing Act 2002.

Once the discussion paper is released, the Clearinghouse will publish a selected bibliography of relevant research and other information, to assist people making submissions.

Media

Revise abuse guidelines - Adams, NZ Herald, 04.08.2015

Cash injection possible for tackling domestic violence, John Key says, Stuff, 03.08.2015

Support for dedicated family violence charge, Radio NZ, 03.08.2015

New domestic violence charges mooted, Radio NZ, 02.08.2015

Government aims to tackle high domestic violence rates, Stuff, 02.08.2015

New family violence offences, tougher penalties coming, TVNZ, 02.08.2015

Domestic violence laws in for major shake-up, TVNZ, 02.08.2015

'My ex would never have touched me sober' - readers react to family violence paper

New family violence offences and tougher penalties likely, Voxy, 02.08.2015

Image: 'A little justice' by Orange Sparrow. Licence Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)