Family and domestic violence

The  Salvation Army provided a submission to the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council’s review ‘Assessing the impacts of domestic and family violence sentence reforms in Queensland.’

In this submission, The Salvation Army builds upon our preliminary submission made to the Council in June 2023 where we recommended:

• The implementation of pre-sentencing risk assessments;
• Specialist training for justice services on coercive control and non-physical forms of violence and misidentification of victim-survivors;
• Embedding dedicated victim-survivor liaisons within the justice system; and
• Integrated co-responder models for police responses to family and domestic violence.

This submission highlights further areas that we believe will ensure the Queensland sentencing system considers risk associated with persons using violence, and adequately works to protect victim-survivors of family and domestic violence. This submission covers the need to:

• Focus on accountability and behaviour change during sentencing processes. We point to the need for increased investment to ensure behaviour change programs are available in a timely manner whenever a person using violence encounters the justice system. We also highlight that these programs must be complemented by intensive, integrated, and ongoing accountability and support mechanisms to best engage persons using violence; and
• Improve service coordination and information sharing. We highlight that to ensure the safety of victim-survivors during sentencing processes, coordinated service responses between justice – including court, corrections and police - and specialist family and domestic violence services must be strengthened.