Police enhance understanding of family violence

Police continue to record family violence incidents and will continue to make those statistics publicly available as we have always done says Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Bush.

"I have publicly stated more than once recently that it is wrong to suggest we no longer count family violence.

"Family Violence statistics were not included in the public release of the 2011 calendar year statistics because we are improving the way collect information to give us a better picture of this complex issue.  This will be in line with international best practice.

"Because of this, the statistics we have for last year are not comparable to data we have released before.

"Public statistics give the public an opportunity to make comparisons between crime from one year to another.  There is no point in releasing stats that don't bear any relation to statistics released in previous years.

"Nothing has changed about the importance of family violence or the priority that the Police put on prevention and response. What is changing is the way we collect the information.

"Statistics around family violence are complex.  Our official statistics are the result of counting each offence as it is recorded.  There is no offence of "family violence". No one is put before the courts to answer a charge of  "family violence".

"People are charged with offences such as male assaults female, grievous assault, sexual assault, harassment and many others. All these offences can be "family violence" but in some cases they are not because the crime doesn't involve people who have a relationship with one another.

"The new reporting system is much more focused on capturing information about the relationship between the offender and the victim.

"This will give us data which can be provided as additional official statistics about family violence that will be publicly reported.

"We are making these operational changes so that we can be of more help to the people who are suffering from family violence.

"Our prime focus here is on the real people behind the numbers.  An adjustment to how we record information does not affect our ability to understand what is happening with family violence or our ability to gauge the effects our interventions are having.

"Family violence has been a key focus for Police for many years and we have made many improvements to the way we work with families" said Mr Bush.

The most recent crime statistics saw 5 percent fewer assaults in 2011. In the year to date dwelling assaults are down by 3 percent. Homicide and related offending dropped 14.4 percent in 2011, down 14 offences from last year. Last year also saw the lowest number of murders in a calendar year since 1995, with 39 murders recorded, compared with 46 in 2010.

"We know around half of these most serious of crimes are family violence related.

"We will continue to work to enhance our service to these families. We also value the relationship we have with our partner organisations and acknowledge the work they do" said Mr Bush.