Confronting the scale of violence in the home. The Chief Commissioner admits that family violence is far worse than police had imagined is alarming.
It may not be surprising, though, to students of social change – the big changes do not happen overnight – nor should Victorians be discouraged by the record levels of family violence reports to police. Rises of 23 per cent in 2011-12 and possibly as much as 25 per cent this year are a measure of how attitudes are changing and of how much work remains to be done.
As Mr Lay told The Age, ”a lot of vulnerable people [are] being injured every night. We never had a true sense of how big this problem was … it’s quite frightening.” He predicts 64,000 family violence offences will be recorded in 2012-13 – three times as many as a decade ago – and says the growth is unlikely to peak by the target date of 2015. That shows how pervasive the problem is.
Much of the growth in numbers, however, is the result of chief commissioners’ efforts since 2000 to change public and police attitudes. Domestic violence is now being treated as a crime, in stark contrast to the old and shameful attitude that violence in the home, mostly directed at women and children, could be ignored as ”just a domestic”.
Victoria is at the challenging stage of coming to terms with the full extent of domestic violence. Much like the scourge of child abuse, the community must tackle the legacy of what was a hidden epidemic, along with the daunting workload for police, courts and support services. Domestic violence accounts for one in four assaults and rapes and more than one in three homicides. It is the single biggest threat to the health of women under 45. Policy responses are still not resourced at anything like the level of ”law and order” priorities. The state government allocated $270 million to put protective service officers on every rail station, when only one in 30 crimes against the person is committed at a public transport location. Its last budget cut $25 million from community health, which covers domestic violence programs. The Age criticised the neglect of these crime victims and the government later offered support agencies an extra $16 million.
Police deserve credit for redoubling their efforts since 2011, when the plan was to create 15 specialist police teams within three years. There are now 27 teams, but their work flows on to the courts, which have not received funding to match the caseload. Mr Lay is right, though, to remind Victorians that responsibility for domestic violence goes beyond the criminal justice system.
When new commissioner Christine Nixon first identified the issue as a priority in 2000, The Age cited the troubling findings of a study of 5000 young Australians, aged between 12 and 20 – today’s young adults. One in five female respondents said a boyfriend had physically threatened her. That, in turn, is linked to an attitude expressed by more than one in three males, who said they should take control in a relationship.
Getting men to respect women as equals is the surest way to reduce domestic violence. It is more often reported as a crime because attitudes are changing, but as a society we are a long way from ensuring the right of all women and children to feel safe in their own homes.
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