Specialist Domestic Violence Courts: Planning (and Researching) for Long Haul System Change

Abstract

The numbers of specialist domestic violence courts in the USA is over 400; there are about 70 in Canada and 140 or so in the United Kingdom. Recently some of the first such courts in Australia – those in Western Australia – were announced to close and Queensland’s first has just commenced a pilot phase. This presentation reflects on what researchers and policy-makers alike might learn from this picture. Drawing on experience with two long established criminal family violence courts – the ACT Family Violence Intervention Program (Australia) and the Manitoba Family Violence Court (Canada) – it is argued that clarity of problem-analysis, and longer term thinking and planning is critical.