Family Law Pathways Network presents:
Associate Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon & Professor JaneMaree Maher:
The views of Australian judicial officers on domestic and family violence perpetrator interventions
Tuesday, 20 October 2020, 1:00 - 2:30 pm AEDT
The Family Law Pathways Networks across Australia invite you to join a free webinar by Associate Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon & Professor JaneMaree Maher. Despite increasing acknowledgement of the importance of perpetrator interventions in the delivery of integrated responses to family violence and promoting perpetrator accountability, there remains very little understanding of how magistrates and other judicial officers view, manage and use perpetrator interventions. This presentation will present the findings for their ANROWS national project examining the use, influence and management of perpetrator interventions in sentencing of domestic and family violence offenders. Their analysis of interviews conducted with 60 judicial officers from across all Australian state and territory jurisdictions reveals that the effective use of perpetrator interventions in decision making is constrained by:
Limited judicial access to information about which (if any) perpetrator interventions have been previously used with a perpetrator,
A lack of knowledge among judicial officers about perpetrator program referral options, in relation to both the availability and nature of programs available, and
Uncertainty over the role of the judicial officers in holding perpetrators to account.
Each of these barriers to effective practice will be discussed alongside recommendations to support judicial officers and judicial practice moving forward.
Registered participants will be emailed a link for the webinar within 24 hours of the scheduled start time and will also have access to a recording of the webinar for a period of time following the live stream
Associate Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon is Director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and an Associate Professor in Criminology in the Faculty of Arts, Monash University (Victoria, Australia). Kate conducts research in the field of family violence, femicide, criminal justice responses to family violence, and the impact of criminal law reform in Australia and internationally. Kate has advised on homicide law reform and family violence reviews in several Australian and international jurisdictions. In 2016 she was appointed to the Victorian Special Minister’s Expert Advisory Committee on Perpetrator Interventions and in 2018 she was appointed to the inaugural Board of Directors of Respect Victoria.
Professor JaneMaree Maher is an internationally recognised gender studies scholar with a focus on family lives and gender violence. Her research critically examines how social institutions such as families and the criminal justice system create gendered inequalities and inequities. Professor Maher is currently Associate Dean Academic Development in the Faculty of Arts and a key researcher within the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre.