Presented by
Description
In May 2019, over a quarter (27%) of those in prison had family violence offences associated with their current sentence, equating to 1,760 individuals. Despite this high prevalence, there has been a lack of research specifically focused on family violence perpetrators in New Zealand, including within corrections settings. To start addressing this gap, in 2017 the Department of Corrections undertook in-depth qualitative interviews with 48 men and women in prison for family violence offences. While numerous studies have quantitatively explored the antecedents of family violence, few have qualitatively examined how perpetrators understand the causes of their violence, nor considered the implications of these understandings for treatment. This paper describes perpetrators’ views about when, how, and why their violence started and against whom, before discussing how this impacted people’s treatment experiences. It concludes by considering the implications of these findings for future service provision.
Speaker Bios
Dr Bronwyn Morrison is a Principal Research Adviser at the Department of Corrections, New Zealand. She has a PhD in Criminology from Keele University, UK and a BA Hons in Criminology from Victoria University of Wellington. She has worked in government research and evaluation roles in New Zealand for the last 14 years, including for NZ Police, Ministry of Justice and the Department of Conservation. Since joining Corrections in 2015 she has undertaken projects on prisoners’ post-release experiences, family violence perpetrators, remand prisoners, Corrections officer recruits, as well as numerous projects on women in prison. She has previously conducted research on bias and the criminal justice system, fear of crime, public perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system, and was the lead author of the 2009 New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey.
Marianne Bevan is a Senior Research Adviser at the Department of Corrections in New Zealand. She has completed a range of research and evaluation projects related to women’s offending, the case management of women in prison, family violence perpetration, prisoners’ trauma exposure, and youth in prison. Prior to joining the Department of Corrections, she conducted research, and implemented projects on gender and security sector reform in Timor-Leste, Togo, Ghana, and Liberia. She has spent the last five months as an O’Brien Residential Fellow at the Centre of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal, Canada.