Criminalising Coercive Control in New South Wales: Misunderstandings and Missed Opportunities

Abstract

In 2022, New South Wales (‘NSW’) became the first Australian jurisdiction to criminalise coercive control, with the offence commencing on 1 July 2024. This follows the creation of similar offences overseas. These novel offences are designed to respond to the extensive critique of the criminal law which has largely focused on discrete incidents of physical violence leaving absent the full range and pattern of abuse experienced as domestic and family violence. In legislating in this area, the NSW Government sought to balance key tensions that emerged in the debates about criminalisation, such as: not to over-reach; the risk of victims being misidentified as offenders; the over-criminalisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; while at the same time addressing coercive control. In this article, I critically examine the NSW offence drawing attention to various misunderstandings about coercive control and misidentification that appear to underpin the NSW approach.