Queensland government to introduce a new offence to criminalise coercive control – Crime
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In December 2021, the primary Report “Hear Her Voice”
was launched by the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce. This
Taskforce, chaired by the Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC was
established to look at the influence of coercive control in
domestically violent relationships and to contemplate the necessity for a
particular offence of home violence within the prison justice
system. This first report made 89 suggestions that search to
additional reform the justice and home violence programs. One of
these suggestions was the creation of a new offence to
criminalise coercive control.
It has been recognised that coercive control is a type of
home violence that constitutes a sample of behaviours
perpetrated in opposition to a particular person to create a relationship of worry,
isolation, intimidation and humiliation.
Queensland Government’s Response
After consideration of the suggestions of the primary report,
the Queensland Government is supportive or supportive-in-precept
of all 89 suggestions made by the Taskforce. The Government
will now begin work so as to implement these. This response
builds upon the numerous reform work accomplished to date within the
“Not Now, Not Ever Report” and Queensland’s present
ten-12 months Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Strategy.
The Government has indicated it is going to progressively introduce a
suite of new legal guidelines into Parliament which is able to fight coercive
control. These will begin with reforms to strengthen the
current legislative responses to coercive control that are to be
launched this 12 months.
Prior to the new offences coming into impact, the Government has
commented that system-vast reform is important. Hence, the Response
from the Queensland Government focuses on the next key motion
areas for this reform:
- Systemic reforms throughout Queensland’s prison justice
system; - elevated consciousness-elevating in the neighborhood and improved
major prevention;
responses, particularly built-in service responses and excessive-threat
groups, perpetrator interventions and co-response;
home, household and sexual violence and justice system;
violence by means of new and persevering with initiatives to deal with
complete-of-providers transformational change;
victims;
The Taskforce’s second report, which is concentrated on
girls’s experiences within the prison justice system as
sufferer-survivors of sexual violence and as accused individuals and
offenders, is due to be launched in mid-2022. Following this
report, the Queensland Government will then contemplate the contained
suggestions and launch a response.
