Police-Perpetrated Domestic and Family Violence: A Scoping Review of Australian and International Scholarship
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Durham University
United Kingdom -
Deakin University Australia
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Deakin University Australia
Abstract
The perpetration of domestic and family violence (DFV) by police officers is a serious abuse of power and has generated a growing body of scholarship in Australia and internationally. Police are uniquely positioned to draw on their expertise, training, and access to weapons to perpetrate DFV while often evading accountability and leaving victim-survivors with limited options to seek protection and redress. This paper sets out findings from a scoping review of 54 scholarly articles, chapters, theses, and other papers which address police-perpetrated DFV (PPDFV). The review generates insight into the methodological, theoretical, and critical implications of PPDFV scholarship across policing, criminology, psychology, sociology, and gender-based research. We identify gaps in jurisdictional coverage and understandings of the rates, prevalence, and nature of PPDFV. The importance of intersectional and critical research, which considers the impacts on PPDFV of gender, race, and sexuality, is also signposted.
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Author Biographies
Dr Briony Anderson is a digital criminologist specialising in privacy abuse, gendered-harms, and technology-facilitated violence and abuse. She uses narrative, creative interviewing and critical techno-cultural discourse analysis to consider how technologies contour experiences of digital abuse, as well as the capacity to resist against them. She also researches on police-perpetrated domestic and family violence, with a focus on the role of independent commissions of inquiry in addressing systemic violence.
Associate Professor Clare Farmer undertakes applied criminal justice focused research, with an emphasis on critical decision-making processes and their effects. She is a former Magistrate and is currently a member of the Adult Parole Board in Victoria.
Danielle Tyson is an Associate Professor of Criminology at Deakin University, with expertise in gender-based violence, intimate partner homicide, filicide, homicide defences, and criminal law reform.