Beyond Survival:
Family Violence & Policing

The policing family violence project responds to police accountability issues, duty failures and harms related to family violence policing, and seeks to intervene into and prevent the criminalisation of victim-survivors.

We can provide legal assistance in the areas of interventions orders and family violence legal support, criminal law assistance or referrals and advice on civil remedies. We also provide social work support and run a narrative therapy ‘storytelling project’ with people experiencing the intersecting impacts of family violence and harms related to policing.

If you or someone you are supporting has experienced an issue with family violence policing, including:

• “Mis-identification”: Being wrongly identified police as the perpetrator of family violence, including being listed as the respondent on a police-initiated intervention order and/or facing criminal charges related to this;

• Police duty failures and breaches of the Victoria Police Code of Practices for the Investigation of Family Violence, including things such as failures to enforce breaches of intervention orders, failures to adequately consider and assess the safety needs of children

• Discrimination or bias in police responses, including on the basis of race or cultural heritage, sexuality, disabilities, or mental health issues

• Situations where the person using family violence is a police officer or employee of Victoria Police

• Police responses leading to criminalisation or other harm to the person experiencing family violence

• Other situations where family violence policing has caused harm or raised police accountability issues