Purpose: Students will be required to select one of three proposed reforms and provide a 2500 word submission to the Victorian state government which outlines the arguments in favour and against the introduction of the reform.
Value: 50%
Word count: 2500 (not including reference list)
Instructions: Following the state election, the Victorian Government is considering reform of legal responses to family violence, as part of which they are specifically seeking submissions on the merits of this reform:
The introduction of a state-wide domestic violence disclosure scheme
You have been invited to provide an expert submission to the government. In you submission you should select one of the above reforms to focus on. Drawing on the material that you have read as part of the Topic 3 readings as well as your own research your responses should:
Examine the merits of your selected reform (including who would benefit from its introduction and what limits in present legal responses it would address),
Critically analyse any limits or potential unintended consequences of your selected reform, and
Make a recommendation as to whether the Victorian Government should proceed with the reform selected.
Your submission should reference relevant Australian and international research to support its case for or against the reform selected.
Referencing: Please use Harvard.
Required Readings
Fitz-Gibbon, K., Walklate, S. & Reeves, E. (2024) Informed and safe, or blamed and at risk? Examining the merits and limits of domestic violence disclosure schemes in Australia and New Zealand. Monash University and the University of Liverpool.
Recommended Reading
Fitz-Gibbon, K & Walklate, S (2016), ‘The efficacy of Clare’s law in domestic violence law reform in England and Wales’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 17(3), pp. 284-300.
Fitz-Gibbon, K., Walklate, S. & Reeves, E. (2024) Domestic violence disclosure schemes may not improve safety for victim-survivors of intimate partner violence.May 3. The Conversation. – https://theconversation.com/domestic-violence-disclosure-schemes-may-not-improve-safety-for-victim-survivors-of-intimate-partner-violence-228994
Leigh has published extensively on this topic, including her recent book. Read Leigh Goodmark’s (2004) and (2009) articles which question the value of legal system interventions; she argues that we need to rethink our approach to law and policy in responding to family violence.
Required Readings:
Goodmark, L (2004), ‘Law Is the Answer-Do We Know That for Sure: Questioning the Efficacy of Legal Interventions for Battered Women’, Louis U. Pub. L. Rev., 23, pp. 7-48.
Goodmark, L (2009), ‘Reframing Domestic Violence Law and Policy: An Anti-Essentialist Proposal’, Wash. UJL & Pol’y, 31, pp. 39-56.
These articles encourage you to rethink what is justice from a victim-survivor perspective and whether a legal intervention can ever provide the outcome victim-survivors want from the system.
We also encourage you to consider Leigh’s argument as you reflect on the various reform options we examined in part 1.
Here is a video of a seminar Leigh Goodmark delivered in 2022 discussing her newest book, which focuses on criminalisation, the idea of the ‘imperfect victim’, and abolition feminism. You can find the recording and summary of this presentation here.
The following is a recommended article that encourages you to consider the argument for systems reform via an examination of the lived experiences of migrant women (a topic we will examine in greater depth in Topic 4).
Abraham, M & Tastsoglou, E (2016), ‘Addressing domestic violence in Canada and the United States: The uneasy co-habitation of women and the state’, Current Sociology Monograph, 64(4) pp. 568–585.
Recommended Readings
There are several recommended readings relevant to this topic’s case studies for any students who wish to expand their understandings of the reforms covered in Topic 3. You may also find these helpful for the assessment.
Barlow, C, Johnson, K & Walklate, S (2018), ‘Coercive control cases have doubled – but police still miss patterns of this domestic abuse’, The Conversation, 24 July.
Burman, M, & Brooks-Hay, O (2018), ‘Aligning policy and law? The creation of a domestic abuse offence incorporating coercive control’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 67–83.
Douglas, H (2018), ‘Legal systems abuse and coercive control’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 84–99.
Duggan, M (2018), ‘Victim hierarchies in the domestic violence disclosure scheme’, International Review of Victimology, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 199-217.
Hester, M (2013), ‘Who does what to whom?’ European Journal of Criminology, 10, pp. 623-637
Myhill, A (2017), ‘Renegotiating domestic violence: Police attitudes and decisions concerning arrests’, Policing and Society.
Royal Commission into Family Violence (2016), ‘Volume III: Offences and sentencing’, Report and Recommendations, Royal Commission into Family Violence, Victoria, pp. 211-215.
Stark E (2007), Coercive Control: How men entrap women. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Walklate, S and Fitz-Gibbon, K (2019), ‘The criminalisation of coercive control: The power of law?’ International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy , vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 94-108.
Walklate, S & Fitz-Gibbon, K (2018), Criminology and the violence (s) of Northern theorizing: A critical examination of policy transfer in relation to violence against women from the global North to the global South. In The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South (pp. 847-865). Palgrave Macmillan.
Wangmann, J (2016), ‘Has he been violent before? Domestic violence disclosure schemes’, Alternative Law Journal, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 230-234.
