Transcript — Evaluating the Gold Coast’s Domestic and Family Violence Specialist Court trial
Anne Edwards, Director, Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council Secretariat
Hello, and welcome to the fifth edition of Sentencing Matters, a podcast from the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council.
Voiceover (music): Sentencing Matters — a podcast that informs, engages and advises on sentencing issues in Queensland.
Anne Edwards:
I'm Anne Edwards, and I'm the director of the Sentencing Advisory Council's Secretariat. In this edition, I'm talking to Dr Christine Bond. She's the Deputy Head of School at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a member of the Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University.
Her research focuses on legal responses to family violence, as well as sentencing and criminal justice discretion. Currently, she's looking at the policing of family violence, domestic violence specialist courts, and the criminal sentencing of domestic violence offenders.
Christine is going to give us an insight into the specialist domestic and family violence court at Southport on Queensland's Gold Coast. This court was the first of its kind in Queensland, offering dedicated magistrates, police prosecutors, defence lawyers and support officers for both the aggrieved and perpetrators, with expertise in domestic and family violence issues.
Hi Christine, and thanks for joining us.
Christine Bond, Deputy Head of School at the School of Criminology and a member of the Griffith Criminology Institute at Griffith University
Hi Anne, and thank you so much for having me.
Anne Edwards:
Can you tell us just quickly what your team's involvement in the Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Court at Southport involved?
Christine Bond:
We undertook a 12-month evaluation of the medium and short term outcomes for the Specialist Court at Southport. This involved a whole range of activities from ethics and organising and setting up the data collection, through to a whole range of data collection activities, from getting administrative data, coding a sample of case files, focus groups, interviews with key stakeholders, as well as surveys of victims of perpetrators involved in the specialist court process.
In addition, we also chose to use a trial comparison site design for the evaluation, since we couldn't... since the court had already started, so there was the similar kind of data collected from that comparison site as well. This all happened within essentially a three to four month period, so it was a pretty intense period of data collection and management of our project, but a lot of fun in some ways too. Maybe that's why I'm an academic.
Anne Edwards:
With your comparison site, how did you choose Ipswich?
Christine Bond:
This was done in consultation with the Domestic Violence Court Reform Team. We were looking for a site that was in an urban location, that ran a... Managed domestic violence matters in a pretty standard, what is now a standard way for an urban, a modern urban court to handle them, which is a domestic violence list, so we weren't interested in comparing it to a court that had no distinction around domestic violence matters at all. It was important to compare it to what is really a standard conventional model for running domestic violence.
We were looking at volume of matters, we were looking at similar kinds of support networks of domestic violence providers around the court as well. Both Southport and Ipswich have had a fairly long period of investment through a variety of different kinds of funding arrangements since the early to mid-1990s, probably more in the case of Southport than in Ipswich, but Ipswich still did have some considerable investment in those services.
And then we were looking at things like distance, so practicalities about distance.
Anne Edwards:
Yes, of course.
Christine Bond:
About whether you... And the cost of collecting data across if the court was too far out. But then we also looked at community, and there was no way we could match communities exactly, but we were looking at similar levels of certain kinds of census characteristics within the larger local government area. It's not an exact match, obviously, but it's a pretty close match I think for thinking about what's a typical urban court that manages domestic violence applications. That allowed us to compare what might be a standard kind of experience for victims to the experience that victims would get in a specialist court model.
Anne Edwards:
And just quickly, why had you been engaged to do the evaluation in the first place?
Christine Bond:
The point I think of the evaluation was the recognition by the department and the Domestic Violence Reform Team of the importance of external and independent evaluative evidence. It's quite possible to do evaluations internally, but there is by having someone come in from the outside who's not invested in the process who hasn't been part of that process, brings a rigour and a sense of independence to the evidence that's collected. That is really important, I think, and powerful in terms of making cases for further funding, or for particular kinds of models to be adopted and so on.
That said, what's also important here I think is the relationship between the evaluator and the people who commission the evaluation, and in this case the Domestic Violence Reform Team, and there's different ways we can think about that relationship, from complete independence and separation, so you just go off and do it, to models where it's much more collaborative, almost like an action research design around the evaluation. Different people have different views on this, but the advantage of a more collaborative approach is you get more of a context that an independent evaluator who doesn't work and hasn't worked in courts would miss.
It allows you to think about what in the policy context matters, and particularly if you're not a policy scholar. So when you're trying to craft in those recommendations, you have a better understanding of the perspective from which the people who are going to potentially adopt those recommendations are coming. The last thing I wanted was to write recommendations that were useless or meaningless, but it was also important that they be based on quality and rigorous evidence.
Excellent. So you would put your evaluation in that category where it's a bit more collaborative?
Christine Bond:
Yes. And it wasn't what I originally envisaged, and I don't know if any of us thought of it in those kinds of terms, but it became quite clear early on that that that collaborative approach was the best for generating the kind of evaluation that we wanted. It was important in thinking about the adoption of the recommendations that there's some level of ownership of those recommendations, but at the same time they are based on an independent assessment of the data that's collected and the processes that occurred. It's the combination of the two that leads to quite a powerful outcome.
Anne Edwards:
That's a nice segway to ask you what were the findings of the evaluation?
Christine Bond:
I think the best way to put it is we found that the management and coordination that had occurred in the specialist model and we compare it to a more standard way of managing, like a DV list, a single DV list day with rotating through magistrates, stakeholders only coming together for that point in time, infrequent kind of meetings between stakeholders, or quarterly meetings between stakeholders. Compared to a court where it happening every day, the stakeholders are there every day and they're seeing and interacting on a regular basis. What we found is that generated a management coordination process that improved experiences for victims. It led to the development of a culture of problem-solving. It wasn't just that problems were brought up, which happens in other lists as well, but also that there then was an impetus to change those problems and to find solutions to those problems.
They weren't always the solutions everyone wanted, and they weren't necessarily in the time frame that everyone wanted. But what was important from an evaluative point of view was, they were at least talking about solutions and working toward solutions, it wasn't just always just the same problems being discussed all the time. Important in that was leadership, and leadership by magistrates, but also leadership in the court as well. Leadership in a form that allowed stakeholders to come together, and be open and sharing of what was going on, and what their issues and concerns were. The first finding is that they’ve made substantial progress in developing this kind of relationship and partnerships that led to a better management of the process.
The other finding was that victims overall were more satisfied in comparison to victims that were surveyed in the comparison site. In particular, they also gave stronger assessment of perceived procedural justice. That is a sense that they were respected, that they were heard, that they got a chance to tell their story. The academic literature suggests, the scholar literature suggests this is really important for victims feeling satisfied with the process and victims being willing to engage with the process. We also found some evidence, and it's early days, so it's probably too early to talk about perpetrator accountability at 12 months, but certainly there was some suggestion when we looked at what victims felt happened in the courtroom in Southport compared to our comparison court, was that they had a sense that there was some responsibility put back on the perpetrator for their behaviour, and they gave high levels of ratings that there was a statement that the behaviour was wrong, and that there was a recognition of this behaviour was inappropriate and needed to stop. So from an early perspective, or early, early days, it signals potentially a way of perpetrator accountability, and thinking about perpetrator accountability.
The last major finding is around costs. It costs more, at one level, but it has actually reduced costs at Southport, which was a very costly court anyway, even before they adopted this model. Even though it costs more to run Southport per matter, compared to some other courts, it has actually over time reduced the costs in Southport. It's kind of fascinating the dilemma of whether or not by implementing court tasks where we actually bring costs overall down, but it also does suggest that it's not a cost-neutral process. We have to invest money, and we may have been previously under investing potentially in the things that might make a difference for the victim experience.
Anne Edwards:
What sorts of things did you find needed to be improved in the current setup in the court in Southport?
Christine Bond:
Most of the recommendations or findings that we made around improvements of the model are focussed not necessarily on things that are necessarily going wrong, but about gaps that probably have not yet been addressed in the process. Some of the things are around how we think about victim support and we manage it, if we think about the court as the location or the hub for referrals, particularly for perpetrators, then how do we manage that, how do we think about where the court sits in that kind of support service framework and just giving them service on the day may not be enough, so how do we conceptualise the role of the domestic violence court in terms of those larger support networks.
Attendance. There's a high level of non-attendance by both, but particularly by perpetrators. If the court is the place they access services, and that seemed to be what came through from the focus groups and interviews with stakeholders, that this was a key place in which perpetrators were an opportunity for us to intervene with perpetrators, then if they're not coming to court then we've missed that opportunity. Where does that opportunity exist elsewhere if they don't come to court? So there are issues around potentially what can improve attendance at court, there's issues around the nature of the support that we give at court, and there's issues around the ways in which we deliver more culturally appropriate kinds of levels of support and models.
Southport presented as very Westernised, English-speaking, although that may have been disguised by people not necessarily reporting ethnic heritages or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander on applications and stuff, but they certainly probably have, at least based on sentences, lower levels, a lower proportion of their population than in some other areas.
Anne Edwards:
What are the dangers of having a one-size-fits-all kind of approach to something like this?
Christine Edwards:
I think it's, maybe I shouldn't say highly dangerous. I think it's foolish not to take a step back and think about the nature of the community the court is servicing. If you think about courts in the 21st century, thinking about the services they provide for victims, and potentially even for perpetrators in a way which perpetrators and offenders are involved in that process, then we have to think about the local context, and we have to think about the communities in which these courts sit.
That means that courts might have to look a little bit... The services and the way in which we put these models in may have to look a little bit different in different locations. I'm not saying they have different legal processes, per se, because obviously they need to be treated equally and the same and consistently. But it is about whether or not a model like Southport would work in some of the certain other locations. You wouldn't want to just dump it in without actually thinking about the needs of that community, the kinds of domestic violence in that community, the partnerships that already pre-exist in that community.
It might mean that that model, the integrated model looks a little bit differently and the stakeholders work a little bit differently in that particular location, and I think that's particularly illustrative when you think about culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and also Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities about a more culturally competent, to use the word that I heard today, model than what Southport in its initial inception looked like.
Anne Edwards:
I'd like to think that government is getting much better at delivering services to diverse population, but sometimes that takes a long time to really boil down what the best way of delivering a service is to different communities, and particularly in the justice context we've always had bricks and mortar courthouses. There might be other ways of doing justice than in that sort of environment, I don’t know.
Christine Bond:
It's a tough call, because you also want to make sure that everyone has access to justice, that we're facing the same kinds of consistent processes and so it's the two things working together to work out the best approach in particular communities. And certainly the Southport model is an urban model, and a high volume model, it's not a regional, remote, low volume model.
Anne Edwards:
It is quite different.
Christine Bond:
Yes. But it can still deliver the similar kind of outcomes, and deliver appropriate legal processes.
Anne Edwards:
If there was one message from your evaluation findings that you want to be heard very clearly by someone listening to this, what would that be and why?
Christine Bond:
That is a very tough question. If we think substantively about domestic violence specialist courts, I think it's the importance... Good victim experiences come from good strong partnerships and leadership within the court context. Those are providing an environment in which we can start thinking about doing justice a little bit differently, thinking about supporting victims a little bit differently. That can allow that to flourish, and then it becomes almost self-sustaining in those kinds of sense. So on one level I think yes, one of the big findings for me, or the big kind of lessons learned, is the importance of that bigger governance context, and getting that right, and then paying attention to the partnerships that already pre-exist and how you might be able to build them up and then take best advantage of them for.
Anne Edwards:
And maintain them most of the time.
Christine Bond:
And maintain them. Because if those go, then we don't have the support structures for victims, so the victim experience is going to be not great. I think by doing that we can then lead to better experiences for victims, where victims feel heard and they feel supported and they feel safer. So one is almost a precursor of the other, at least in a sustainable way. We might get one, but if we don't have the other I don't think we can sustain that victim experience.
The armour message I think... I would love... I think I want heard is the importance of this kind of evaluative work. We often, particularly in the court context, don't think about evaluating court innovations, we often don't think about courts being very innovative at all, but they actually can be. Often we find because it takes time, and sometimes you have to hold back on making... So allow the space for it to occur. The importance of doing that kind of work, and gaining that kind of evidence and then creating data systems that will ongoingly collect evidence that allows you to monitor, and therefore adjust and change. That would probably be my second, maybe self-serving message is the importance of good evaluation and collecting good, rigorous data, not just for an evaluator, but also for your own internal management purposes. It's really hard to monitor if you don't understand what's going on.
Anne Edwards:
Very true. We talk a lot about evidence-based policy in government, but I don't know, there's got to be a real commitment to that, and that means putting the funding to it, putting the rigour around it...
Christine Bond:
And allowing the time for it.
Anne Edwards:
Allowing the time for it, exactly and building it into the process.
Christine Bond:
Yes, the process. But it's almost like we want to... From this should produce knowledge, just knowledge. And that's the ultimate goal of an evaluation in some sense is just to...
Anne Edwards:
To improve our practise...
Christine Bond:
Yeah, practice knowledge. And I could say the same in an academic context about our learning and teaching, is that we probably haven't focused enough on evaluating that in different kinds of ways, and producing this practice knowledge. I recognise the challenges of doing that.
Anne Edwards:
Very much so.
Christine, thank you so much for joining me today to share your insights with our listeners. It's a great example of how research and policy can work together to provide an innovative approach to addressing domestic and family violence in our courts.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Sentencing Matters. For more information on sentencing issues in Queensland, head to our website, sentencingcouncil.qld.gov.au