CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses domestic violence.
The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (Bocsar) have released new research which has found that over the last five years rates of domestic violence in the state have risen by a distressing 13.5 per cent.
The upsetting data was found in a study by Bocsar, which used groundbreaking AI text-mining models to analyse texts and police reports on over 500,000 domestic violence cases, to help identify and measure amounts of coercive control in cases.
“Coercive control relates to abusive behaviours which can exert domination and control over another person,” explained Bocsar’s executive director Jackie Fitzgerald.
These abusive behaviours can vary from threats of violence, controlling who the victim sees and talks to or what they wear, humiliation and dehumanising treatment, as well as control of finances.
The findings found that of the half a million cases it looked at, at least one instance of coercive control was found in 57 per cent of them.
The most common forms of coercive control were property theft and damage, intimidation and threats, and verbal abuse.
Other outcomes from the report included finding that of all the domestic violence cases studied, a TENTH of them included threats of harm, and six per cent included death threats. It also found that threats of harassment are typically made via phone or text, rather than in person.
This report comes after NSW has passed laws to make coercive control a stand-alone offence as of July next year, with Fitzgerald promising, OR: “we will closely monitor DV charges and patterns as coercive control becomes a standalone criminal offence in July 2024.”
The use of a text-mining methodology to scour through this massive amount of cases may be used in future reports according to Fitzgerald, such as analysing the frequency of other factors that may contribute in domestic violence like mental health or drug use.
Other five year trends include a 29 per cent increase in sexual assault, according to Bocsar’s crime statistics data.
Help is available.
- If you require immediate assistance, please call 000.
- If you’d like to speak to someone about domestic violence, please call the 1800 Respect hotline on 1800 737 732 or chat online.
- Under 25? You can reach Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800 or chat online.
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